


A Whitewashed Crow

by badAquatic



Series: Elvish Americana: An Eclectic Study of Fae in North America [3]
Category: Elvish Americana, Fairy Tales & Related Fandoms, Original Work
Genre: Actual Murder, African-American Folklore, American Folklore - Freeform, Attempted Murder, Cannibalism, Child Death, Cryptozoology, Drug Dealing, Fae & Fairies, Fantastic Racism, Illustrated, In case you didnt figure that out from before??, M/M, Prostitution, Shapeshifting, Smuggling, Spanking, Urban Fantasy, Villain Protagonist, attack of the 90s mallrats, clown related shenanigans, crime boys doing crime things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-02
Updated: 2018-01-01
Packaged: 2019-02-09 10:56:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 44,307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12886401
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/badAquatic/pseuds/badAquatic
Summary: Tops gets into a fistfight with a grey alien and is then lectured by his crime lord boss about proper workplace behavior. Don’t be like Tops, kids. Stay in school.





	1. Where the Angels Roam

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, look we have an actual arc instead of just a bunch of random short stories! Questions? Comments? Want to learn more about the world? Direct them to my tumblr at bad-imagination.tumblr.com (heads up: its often nsfw).

Humans created the Disappointments. Not in the magical sense of forest-razing and the two worlds rippling and shaping each other as the centuries pour on, but in the more metaphorical sense.

Let’s take a step back.

Humans have always had very strong ideas of the fae; so solid and tactile that just from two verses of poetry you’ve felt as if you’ve walked the golden halls, drunk from silver cups, eaten the blessed food of the Seelie, learned the astral arts of the Unseelie, and broke bread with the thousand trooping and courtless that wander between. Humans have written odes with aching, arthritic fingers to the utopian perfection of the fae.

It’s easy to get a swollen head after reading such things, especially if you’re rich and have earned your wisdom through income. This is especially true in Vow-of-Bliss, a homestead city blessed with big money and even bigger ideas. It nourishes itself off dreamers with the lure of brothels and casinos and feeds the cold remnants of cash to strange ideas that wouldn’t get off the ground in sensible cities like Blessing-of-Power or Oath-of-Valor.

1919\. The latest economic bubble and tax hikes on the rich earn the ire of young Seelie and Unseelie nobles, who despise the idea of their hard-inherited money going toward insipid things like the roads and the poor. They form an inter-Court cabal and plan to make their own community in the destitute marshlands. For this plan, they bring only the necessities: books, clothes, food, gardening tools, building materials, and the family servants that would do all the labor. After all, if the lowlies could travel and live off the fat of the land, why couldn’t the well-bred do the same?  
1926\. The nobles leave one home for another. Their little communities spring up near various rivers and lakes in the marshes south of Vow-of-Bliss.  
1930\. After being besieged with insects, dragons, and disease, some of the nobles return to their ancestral homes in Vow-of-Bliss. Those who have gambled away their fortunes on this venture remain in the marshes, along with their descendants. With time, these experimental communities decay or are merged into neighboring towns. Soon they are no different from the other bits of marshland civilization.

This story is only vaguely about one of these towns. 

Out of all these towns, Aspect-of-the-Knight is the least inhospitable. It is past several dead trees, an abandoned dragon’s nest, and is directly west of the highway leading to vibrant Vow-of-Bliss but not so far south as to pass Whisper-of-Cover or not so far north as to pass Curse-of-Fortitude. Within this medium sized town is the neighborhood of Repent-and-be-Baptized.

This is where Tops currently is.

Tops is sitting at a bus stop, but he’s unsure how often they run. People who live in little towns prefer their mediocre cars, which are too uninteresting to be considered in the same categories as the mutant monsters in Vow-of-Bliss. They’re unimaginative, shaped like snails and fish, full of concerned mothers and ugly children. It almost makes Tops miss that ugly, gaudy city.

He takes another puff on his blunt, hoping the marijuana will settle his nerves. It doesn’t. He’s too damned rattled, mostly because he hates this place. At least Vow-of-Bliss had the distraction of passable food and good vibes glamour. There’s nothing pleasant about Aspect-of-the-Knight and he hates the neighborhood even more; from the quaint little townhouses, the picket fences, and telephone wires to the neighbors constantly giving him the stink eye.

 _Enough of this bullshit,_ he decides. He gives a glance at the car sitting across the street and then tosses his blunt into the garbage can. He gets up and crosses the street, heading for the grey townhouse wedged in-between all the other indistinguishable townhouses. He rings the doorbell and five minutes later, the door opens.

A young man looks up at him, equal to Tops only in age. He only goes up to Tops’ hip and has large black glass eyes and his bald head covered by a knit cap.

“Tops?” he asks.

“Who else would bother coming here?” Tops says.

Niklas snorts. “You’re late! I have things to do y’know.”

“Besides jerking off, Niklas?” Tops says.

Niklas moves his head in a way that implies that he’s rolling his eyes, as the physical act is impossible for him. “Get in here, you tall douche.”

“You’re the one who’s the same _size_ as a douche.” Tops grumbles but follows Niklas inside.

The living room is the same as it’s always been: old couches cluttered with blankets and magazines, the TV with the bent rabbit-ears, the stack of VHS horror movie bootlegs lacking covers and proper labels. The only change is that Niklas has added more of his toys to the living room decorations. Die-cast cars are now displayed on wall racks made for spices and family photos and in cabinets meant for fine china. The garbage bin is overflowing with folded cardboard, popped bubble wrap, and Styrofoam packing peanuts.

Niklas runs to the kitchen. “Close the door! I’m cooking!”

Tops shuts the door, doesn’t bother locking it, and follows the other fae into the kitchen. Or he tries to follow before the stink of chemicals hits his nose. H wee lingers in the doorway, seeing that Niklas has been hard at work. There’s already three steaming coffee pots sitting on the counter and empty cans of Redbull and Jolt Cola are stacked in the corner, making a small aluminum city. On the kitchen table are piles of dried leaves, oozing berries, skinned toads, and other items pilfered from the swamp.

“What gives, Tops? You said you’d help me with the planting!” Niklas says, moving a boiling pot off the stove and to the sink. “You know that’s a two-man job. Did you at least get some Jolt Cola this time?”

“Afraid not.”

“ _What_?” Niklas turns to Tops, black eyes nearly bulging out his head. “Are you serious with this shit? I asked you a _million times_ to get Jolt Cola or we can’t make anything good!”

“Your pot’s fuming.”

“Shit!” Niklas turns back to the pot, which is starting to pour out blue smoke. He turns on the faucet, doused the smoke with lead tinted water. The small grey man exhales, “Fuck it, then.” He glances at Tops. “I might as well tell you now: I’m heading out.”

“Heading out?” Tops’ eyes drift to the living room but there’s only evidence of Niklas unpacking his usual crap. There are no luggage bags or moving boxes in sight. “You going on vacation?”

“I fucking _wish_.” Niklas stirs the chemical contents of the coffee pot with a metal ladle. “Leaving the Disappointments more like it. More guys are setting up shop here. Things are getting too hot for my blood.” He pauses in the stirring, looks to Tops. “Crysta’s dead, you know.”

“Sorry for your loss.” Tops is too buzzed and tired to pretend to care.

“It’s not _my_ loss!” Niklas walks to the cupboard, dragging the same chair he used for the oven and sink. The little gray man climbs onto the chair, reaching up for the handle. “It’s her kids that are fucked royal. _Fucking idiot!_ I told her about going to the wrong side of Curse. She got herself robbed and wouldn’t give them what she wanted. What’d she _think_ would happen?”

“Which ‘Curse’? Curse-of-Fortitude or Curse-of-Empathy?”

“Does it matter?” Niklas pulls the metal strainer out the cupboard and climbs off the chair. “All of them are fucking whackadoo in ‘Curse’. A whole bunch of necromancing brats and other untouchables that no other place wants to deal with.” He places the strainer in the sink, pouring the coffee pot concoction through it. He adds more cold water, sifting through the contents like a man panning for gold. “And _all_ of them hungering for a slice of this pie.”

The fact that towns with ‘Curse’ in the name tend to be full of said undead-loving descendants is part of the reason why Tops avoids them. Still, Crysta’s death brings up another concern for him. “Legionnaires come by?” He fights to keep the tremor out his voice.

“Two days ago.” Niklas gets the pliers and picks out the blue-green rocks lying in the bottom of the strainer. “They showed up the morning they found Crysta with a hole in her gut. Said I was in her emergency contacts.”

Tops’ mouth goes dry, but he’s not sure why. He only met Crysta three times and she never made much of an impact on him. Still, he crosses the threshold, braves through the cloud of chemicals, and goes to the fridge. Niklas never has much in there, but there’s always contraband alcohol. He grabs a Corona and takes a swig. “They smack you around?”

“Not much. You know how it is with us servant races. Toss us out a moving vehicle and we’ll get up and head off for our next shift at work. Once they let me go, Crysta’s house was already empty.” Niklas places the green crystals on a dinner plate with care.

“Kids too?”

“Yup. No idea what orphanage they dumped them in. Maybe they gave a call to Daddy but I doubt it since he hasn’t forked over any child support.”

“So where are you headed then?”

Niklas removes the last of the green crystals and grabs the plate “If you’re just going to stand and watch, at least help me. I gotta get these dime bags of Ecto done before I completely set up shop.”

Tops rolls his eyes but doesn’t argue. Now that Niklas is done cooking, the smell will fade quickly. He gets the plastic baggies from the cupboard and sits at the table across from him.

“So are you heading for Vow then?” Tops asks.

“Like I’d tell you!” Niklas laughs, slowly placing the drug into little baggies. “You’re a total snake, Tops. The minute you find out where I’m crashing, you’d knock at my door wanting to crash too.”

Tops finishes off the Corona and goes back to the fridge. He may as well indulge if he’s going to be here for a while. “Way to be prejudiced against snake fae.”

“I’m prejudiced against _all_ fae, especially you tall bastards!” Niklas fills up the baggies, completely focused on his task. “Tall fae always have their heads in the clouds so much that you forget you’re walking in the mud with the rest of us. Little grays and greens got a better grasp on reality than all the tall whites and blacks combined in Vow-of-Bliss.”

“Says you.” Tops opens his second Corona. “I should put my skin back on and bite your heel.”

“You’d never bite the hand that supplies you.” Niklas finally looks at Tops and scowls, “You better not drink all my Coronas! Those are a pain in the ass to get!”

“You’re leaving anyway. I’m just helping with the cleanup.”

Niklas grunts, gathering the baggies in his arms. “If you’re going to mooch, at least give me the money you owe me.” Niklas places the baggies in a larger bag, places it in the bottom of a grocery bag, and covers it with cans, boxed cereals, and other packaging. He then looks at Tops, seeing that the other fae hasn’t moved. “What are you waiting for?”

“Can we not do this in here?” Tops leaves the kitchen, taking another Corona with him. “You know how much I hate the smell.”

“Gods, you’re such a fucking _pansy_.”

Niklas complies because he likes money and company more than Tops’ complaining. The grey man grabs a Budweiser and they head upstairs. They walk past the dusty bureau with family photos on it, entering the laundry room. The laundry room smells of detergent and musty clothes but it’s better than the chemical stink of the kitchen. The washer and dryer sit in the corner, although they haven’t worked in years. There’s a small black and white TV, two chairs, and a small table perfectly sized for card playing.

Niklas opens the washer, taking out a plastic tub of cash. Tops digs in his wallet, pulling out the cash he has. Niklas’ jaw drops when he sees it.

“You’re kidding me! _250?_ ” Niklas asks, “What happened to the 400 you had last time?”

“I ran into some…problems.” Tops traces a lazy circle in the dew on the Corona bottle. “Legionnaires are rushing runners and pushers in the colonies. I couldn’t make a lot of sales without getting some holes in me.”

Niklas grumbles and gets out a blunt from a container in the dryer. He lights it and sits in a chair. “This is her fault.” He grunts, “That bitch in Vow-of-Bliss.”

“Which bitch?” The only bitch Niklas ever took pains to mention was Crysta in their on-again-off-again misery of a relationship.

“Bridgewater.” Niklas puts his feet up on the table, which is a struggle for someone of his stature. “Some old money bitch that moved up into Vow-of-Bliss. Used her cash to buy Pierce Zillat’s council seat. Even moved into his old manor. You know Pierce Zillat, right?”

“I know his image.” Tops never paid attention to homestead politics but it’s hard to ignore the old posters of Pierce Zillat that littered the abandoned buildings in Vow-of-Bliss or the pro-Zillat articles that popped up from time to time in the Seelie papers. “The Crooning Councilor. They’d always use old photos of him from when he was in _Guys and Dolls_ in the paper _._ ”

Niklas smirks. “You lowlies get the newspaper out in your little hobbit holes?”

Tops’ teeth would normally clench but the marijuana and the alcohol have softened the blow to a slight sting. “You munchkins get the paper specially sized for your tiny hands?”

Niklas snorts and takes another puff. “I fucking wish.”

“What does it matter that Zillat’s seat was bought? Zillat’s been dead for...” He pauses. “Shit, I don’t know. Long enough, I guess.”

“He died like in…1978? ’79? Sometimes around that.” Tops shrugs and Niklas continues, “Anyway, everybody and their brother knew that seat was meant for one of Zillat’s protégés. Instead, this old money bitch comes right the fuck out of _nowhere_ and just buys it with all the cash that’s falling out of her cash. Now she’s calling shots all over Vow-of-Bliss, cracking down on contraband and saying she wants to clean up the place. Now, I have nothing against tall whites and blacks--”

“So says the little gray man.”

“—but highbreds don’t know _anything_ about running a city. They should just stick to their plantations, pretending to be kings and queens like they always have. No aristocrat’s got business being a councilor. Soon she’s going to have us bowing and doing other bullshit like you colony bunch.”

“I don’t bow to anybody and I don’t plan on starting.” Tops moves on from the now empty Corona and cracks open the other. He takes another swig and looks at the wadded up pile of bills on the table. “Take your share already. I need to hit the road.”

Niklas tilts his head. “What gives? You’re destroying my Coronas.”

Tops approaches the minifridge but it’s as empty as his stomach. Fucking wonderful. “You’re not the only who wants a ‘vacation’.”

“Is it your pimp?”

Tops stares into the empty mini-fridge for a full minute before realizing what was just said. He slowly turns and looks at Niklas. At first he thinks it’s a badly timed joke but there’s no humor in the fae’s expression.

“What the…?” Tops grinds his teeth. “I am not a _prostitute_ , Niklas!”

“Hey, it’s okay with me.” Niklas says, “We all have a rough time and we have to make ends meet by doing things we’d rather not think too hard about it. I used to--”

“I do not want to hear about your high school misadventures!” Tops growls, “You think I’m a whore? _Seriously_? Whatever made you think I was a whore?”

“ _You’re_ the one with all the jewelry, the high heels, the long hair, the mysterious bruises, not wanting to talk about your shady past, the smuggling, and that time you came onto me--”

“I was joking! And _drunk_!”

“We met in a strip club and you were giving head to an insectoid!”

“I was also drunk!”

“When are you _not_ drunk?”

“Right now, unfortunately.”

Niklas shakes his head. “You have a problem.”

Tops rubs his temples and takes a deep breath. “Says the friendly neighborhood _drug dealer_.”

“I can still be concerned about my--” There’s a loud creak from downstairs. Niklas stops talking, waits in the silence. Heavy footsteps echo through the mostly empty townhouse, followed by voices.  “The fuck?” he murmurs.

Niklas pushes past Tops, reaching behind the mini-fridge. He pulls out a handgun and races through the door. Niklas doesn’t say a word, quickly leaving the laundry room. Tops exhales with the hope he’ll stop shaking and only then does he follow.

Niklas has the gun but he doesn’t shoot it. There’s no point because the living room has five huge airplane gremlins in it and there’s no point in shooting anything at them without armor-piercing rounds.  It also doesn’t help that the gremlins all have guns and even if Niklas got a lucky shot in, he’d be full of holes in a second.

“Put it down on the stairs and come down here. Slowly.” requests one of the gremlins.

“Alright. Just don’t break anything.” Niklas bends down, placing the gun on the steps. He slowly walks down, making sure to keep his hands in the air. “So who are you working for?”

The gremlins chortle. “Why don’t you ask your friend?”

It takes a full minute for Niklas to look at Tops. Tops walks down the stairs, passing by the gun and standing at the base of the stairs.

“ _Seriously_?” Niklas asks, “You’re betraying me?”

Tops looks away, focusing on another display of Niklas’ ugly toy car collection. “You knew this would happen sooner or later.”

“You’re so full of shit I’m surprised you’re not spitting brown!” Niklas snarls, “I was one of the few people who _wasn’t_ using you as a cockwarmer at that strip club and _this_ is the thanks I get?”

“Don’t fucking turn this on me!” Tops turns around, looking down at Niklas. “You never thought of me as an equal! I’m just a fucking ‘lowly’ to you!”

“You girls want us to take five while you hash this little drama out?” Prospect walks out of the kitchen, carrying the remainder of the fridge’s alcohol in his arms.

“What kind of goons are you?” Tops asks, looking at the airplane gremlins. “You should be roughing up the prisoner, rifling through his things, or _at least_ keeping him from insulting your boss!”

“Since when are we goons?” asks one gremlin.

“Or specifically, _your_ goons?” questions another.

“Yeah, you don’t sign our checks.”

“You don’t have checks! None of us do!” Tops says.

“Says you.”

“Plus, this is a nice place. I’d hate to damage it.”

Prospect has already wandered away from the living room center, looking at one of the car models on the wall. “Hey, do you buy these premade or do you put them together in a kit?”

“Some of them are kits, some of them are models,” Niklas says with a smug smile. “I’ve got the bigger scale ones upstairs in my collector’s room and I’ve got them organized by year of release. Right now I’m bidding on a Ford Model A Van. I’ve got way too many modern brands right now: Buick, BMWs, Caterhams--”

“We’re not here to discuss your stupid hobby.” Tops says.

Niklas seizes a die-cast Ford Pickup from a table and flings it at Tops’ head.  “Like it’s any dumber than collecting _shoes_!” 

Tops has many skills but fast reflexes are not one of them. The toy car collides with his nose, sounding a loud _crack!_ Tops yelps and immediately grabs a model RV. He flings it back at Niklas. “It’s practical to have more than two pairs of shoes! What’s so fucking practical about owning a bunch of dumb toy cars?”

Niklas ducks behind the living room sofa, grabbing two more cars. “And you’re surprised why people think you’re a whore? You know how to run in heels! That’s a fucking whore skill!”

“He’s got you there, Curls,” Prospect says.

“You’re not helping!” Two more cars are thrown but Tops moves behind another sofa. He grabs other cars, tossing them across the room. “Running in heels is a skill any practical person should have!”

Prospect smirks and leans against the wall. He cracks another Budweiser. “Settle in, boys,” he says, “it’s going to be a while before we’re out of here.”

 

“Let me get this straight,” Virgil says, “the reason you’re two hours late is because these two decided to get into a screaming match, then a car fight, and then when they ran out of cars they started using fists and that’s why you had to drag them into my peaceful office in _this_ condition?”

“Yeah, that’s about the sum of it,” Prospect says.

Niklas and Tops both sit in the office as far apart as possible with Prospect standing between them. Niklas doesn’t have a scratch on him but Tops looks like he’s been dragged behind a horse for the past hour. Niklas is a small bastard but he knows how to hit all the vitals and take down a taller threat faster than one of equal stature. Tops’ nose is stuffed with tissue and he has a bag of ice pressed against his injured eye.

“It was hilarious.” Says another gremlin.

“I’ve never seen two people who can’t fight at all go at it.” Adds the other.

“Says you. _I’m_ not bruised.” Niklas says.

“That’s because you’re like a fucking potato! Dropping you does jack shit!” Tops growls.

A low chuckle vibrates through the room. All eyes turn toward Virgil, who is still sitting behind his desk. His lips are curled into a smile but there is a smothered fury in his eyes.

“I’m _so glad_ you could be amused by this diversion.” Virgil says, “So amused that you waste my time with me waiting for you to show up. It’s almost as if you don’t value all the trouble I go through to keep things organized here, while you get drunk and fight like idiotic children.”

The airplane gremlins back away, looking to Prospect to smooth this over. Prospect maintain his ground, looking at Virgil. “It wasn’t anything serious, sir,” he says, “and we were more waylaid by the checkpoints while we were driving. They’ve really cracked down on people moving between the homestead and colonies.”

Virgil is examining his nails, studying for imperfections. “I like to keep to my schedule. Of course, I allow an hour of leeway if there are delays, but to be purposely delayed in such a way is so very…foolish.” He folds his hands, resting his chin on them. “So here we are. What now, my fools?”

“I’m sure we can, uh,” Prospect begins but he’s floundering.

“For the record, Tops is the one who wasted your time.” Niklas holds up his hand like he’s in school. “I was getting ready to leave Aspect anyway and I wasn’t going to fight your guys. How could I? I’m four foot nothing. Tops is the one who picked the fight _and_ knew you were on a time limit.”

Virgil’s eyes narrow, briefly considering the words before the smile changes from that of menace to amusement. “Ah, that does sound like our resident rat.”

“You’re going to trust him over me?” Tops demands.

“Is he wrong?” Tops sputters and Virgil chuckles, “That’s what I thought.” He waves his hands to the gremlins. “Take Niklas to the new building. Tops and I have business to discuss.”

Prospect exhales, as so do the other airplane gremlins. They quickly leave the office, accompanied by Niklas. Once they’re gone, Tops gets out of the chair.

“What in the actual fuck, Virgil?” Tops demands, “You’re letting them go just like that? You gave me the fucking third degree when you found out I was selling on your territory!”

“You’re going to have to work harder on your arguments if you want to pass this class, Topsy.” Virgil leans back in his chair and folds his legs, posing like the perfect little aristocrat he is. “You were just another ratty dealer selling where you shouldn’t have been in the first place. Niklas is a cooker of high quality and therefore a far more important asset.”

“And what about me?” Virgil raises an eyebrow. Tops’ teeth clench and he slams his palms on the desk. “Stop jerking me around already! You wouldn’t have kept me alive if I wasn’t useful to you somehow. Why are you just treating me like an errand boy? ‘Fetch this, Tops’. ‘Go here, Tops’. I can do more than this!”

Virgil does not answer. He is no longer smiling and his eyes are cold, indifferent to Tops’ words. Suddenly the room feels cold but Tops doesn’t back away.

 _“Please sit.”_ Virgil orders.

Tops’ legs immediately move away from the desk. They sit him on the chair, plopping down with such violent force it feels like all the gravity in the room has seized him. Virgil remains in his same position, looking at the other fae.

“Tops, I understand your frustration,” Virgil says, in the placating tone of a teacher dealing with a particularly troublesome student. “You want to prove yourself so that I don’t throw you out on your flat ass and leave you for the Legionnaires to deal with.”

Virgil gets out of the chair and approaches Tops. With Tops sitting, Virgil towers over him. Pale fingers move onto the top of Tops’ head that is securely covered with a head wrap. The fingers move around, massaging his skull. For some reason, Tops feels more…at least with the massage. Like he could fall asleep. 

“And most importantly, Tops, you want to be _good_.” Virgil’s voice is a soft hum now, soothing along with the massage. “You want to be the best at what you do, whatever it is because you want to pull yourself out of the muck. You want to rise above what everyone thinks you’re capable of and prove them all wrong about you. I find that a very admirable trait. It’s part of the reason why I decided against shooting you in the face the first night we met.”

Tops shudders and finds he can’t speak, even to call out Virgil on his bullshit. Tops is a lot of things but he’s not stupid. These are the words of con-artists and cultists…and yet Virgil’s fingers feel so good on his scalp. He can’t remember the last time someone massaged him like this.

It feels like heaven. No, it feels better than heaven.

It feels like home.

Then the hands are taken away and Virgil takes only a step back. Tops reaches out but doesn’t grab Virgil’s hand. He knows there’s no point in it. It’s not like he deserves such touches anyway. He’s only one of Virgil’s many employees.

“You know what you have to do, right?” Virgil asks. “I can’t have someone work for me and yet waste my time with their petty squabbles.”

Tops’ pride bristles, immediately erasing the pleasant feelings of home and heaven he had earlier. “How do you even expect me to get anything done when the goons you give me won’t obey me?”

“Goons?” Virgil smiles and then bursts into laughter. Tops blanches, watching his boss continue laughing for a minute before recomposing himself. “Goons, you call them? What are you: a cartoon?”

Tops goes from feeling the blood drain from his face to embarrassment. “Its—it’s just what came to mind--”

Virgil walks behind his desk, opening it and sifting through whatever he has stored inside. “Firstly, they’re not goons. Goons are, by definition, just hired muscle. Prospect and his kin are more helpful than that. Secondly, they are not _yours_. You _borrow_ them from me and that is your first mistake. However you are new at this, so I’m allowing myself to be a bit more lenient than usual.”

“Lenient in what sense?” Tops mutters. There’s a feeling in the pit of his stomach that tells him he’s not going to like whatever Virgil pulls out of that desk.

“Ah, here it is.” Virgil removes an object from the desk. At first glance, Tops thinks it’s a magic wand topped with a star…but then he realizes the star is made of leather and it’s a bit _too_ flexible just to be a wand. “Consider yourself a horse and I the Caballero who has found you, wild and yet very talented. Still, you must be brought to heel in order to perform for the future shows. Understand?

“I understand you have shitty taste in metaphors.”

Virgil is focused on the star-topped riding crop, grinning to himself. “I’m giving you two choices: you can either repay me with twenty minutes in the zombie room…or you can take ten lashes.”

Just ten lashes? That’s less than the legionnaires would have given him for dealing, pending on how the officer felt at that moment. Tops doesn’t let the good luck show on his face though. He pretends to debate with himself for several seconds before muttering, “The lashes…”

Virgil smiles, still favorably stroking the riding crop. “Wonderful!”

Tops knows that Virgil isn’t a fool. You don’t get to be an infamous crime boss without understanding a few things about people, whether fae or human. This is all a part of some weird little game, but Tops knows how to play games better than anyone. So he stands up and moves to the desk.

Tops’ fingers unbutton his jeans, but thin fingers run along his arms. Tops shudders and glances at Virgil, who stands close behind him.

“Is there some secret reason you wear them so tight?” Virgil whispers in his ear, “They’re not going to make your flat ass anymore round.”

Tops smirks. “Who says I want it to look that way in the first place?”

Virgil chuckles and his thin fingers slip inside of Tops’ jeans, steadily tugging them down. The jeans move over the curve of his ass, revealing the creamy brown skin hidden underneath. Virgil runs his fingers along the skin and Tops shudders and forces himself to stay still.

“Keep count or I’ll start again,” Virgil says.

“What--”

The first strike comes down, swatting across Tops’ left cheek. Tops yelps, breath leaving his lungs from the impact. He shudders and tries to remember that he’s in his boss’s office and has to maintain _some_ level of composure. 

“Y-you could have warned me!” Tops stammers, when the stars clear from his eyes.

The crop comes down again, this time on the other cheek. He gasps again and Virgil chuckles. “I didn’t hear you counting. That makes it one so far.”

Tops looks over his shoulder, glaring at the boy. “It was two!”

“You didn’t say ‘two’. In fact, you didn’t say anything.”

“You didn’t even give me a chance to--” Another strike and Tops’ thoughts are disorganized once again. He breathes in slowly, “ _Two!_ And fuck you, Virgil!”

Virgil chuckles. “We’ll see how you feel afterward.”

The whip comes down again and again and each time Tops gasps. The skin on his ass reddens and he has to hold onto the desk to just remain upright. He breathes slowly, trying to ignore the sensitive feeling on his reddened skin.

Virgil doesn’t linger “Pull up your pants. We need to take a little trip.”

Tops pulls up his jeans, inhaling so he can squeeze into them. Damn, he knew he should have gotten them a size bigger but it was the only size available at the general store. “Can I at least have some ice for my ass?”

“And detract from your punishment? Of course not.” Virgil says.

 

The ride in the car is uncomfortable; not necessarily painful for Tops but going over every bump makes him miserable. At least this time he isn’t riding in the trunk of the Cadillac but in the backseat. The driver is a goatman who cracks their gum and doesn’t speak a word to either Virgil or Tops. Virgil sits in the backseat sipping Fruitopia and texting on his cellphone. Tops still doesn’t understand what the hell he wants or what he’s doing here. Virgil still carries himself like an aristocrat with his nose held higher in the air than anyone else but wears the clothes of common borderland brats: Loose shirt. Ripped jeans. Old sneakers. Tops can’t make head or tails of it. 

The car comes to a rough halt, nearly sliding Tops off his seat. He looks through the window and sees long stretches of asphalt and weeds surrounded y empty buildings. Virgil gets out the car and Tops follows. Standing out in the air, he smells the downwind air from the landfill.

Wickerson Paper towers over Tops like a mother welcoming home a wayward child. He looks to Virgil, who is still idly texting. “What are we doing here?” he demands.

“I think you already know that answer.” Virgil’s eyes roam over the abandoned paper mill. Most of the windows have blown out by storms and the roof tiles torn away, letting in weather and light. “What interesting taste you have in dwellings.”

Tops swallows, confirming another fear. “You’ve been watching me.”

“It’s not like you put much effort into hiding. Addicts are poor secret keepers.” Virgil smiles. “Where are your manners? Aren’t you going to give your guest a tour?”

Tops knows refusing isn’t on the table but it’s not like he has any reason to. He hasn’t been back at the paper mill since Virgil scooped him up. It’s less of a home now and more like an apartment he hasn’t visited in a while. He pushes open the broken front door, making sure to avoid the broken glass and waste that litter the bottom ground. Even though Tops has better shoes than his ratty old sneakers, he’d rather not ruin them. The entire time, Virgil’s eyes roam the bottom floor; perhaps looking for trickery or maybe plotting something else.

The upper floor is undisturbed with Tops’ petty alarm system still in place. He quickly dismantles the paint cans and glass bottles on a string hanging in front of the manager’s office and opens the door. Everything is as it was before: the sleeping bag, a small pile of books both human and fae, and battery operated floodlight.

“And that’s it.” Tops concludes.

Virgil walks past Tops and stands in the center of the room. Then the fae turns in a complete circle, studying the entire room. Virgil slowly blinks and then looks at Tops.

“You’ve lived this way for five years?” he asks.

Tops bristles. At first he wants to ask how in the hell Virgil knows that, but then he remembers that Virgil is an old blood. It’s likely that this is just scratching the surface of the magical talent built into his ancient bloodline. 

“I never meant to stay here--” Tops begins.

“Must have been lonely.” Virgil walks to the pile of books and flips through one of them. It doesn’t hold his interest for long because he then turns his attention to the emergency flashlight. “So what were you running from that was terrible enough to drive you here?”

Tops’ mouth is dry. Even if he wants to answer, he thinks he would vomit the moment the first syllables came out. Virgil does not wait for a response and goes to the duffel bag in the corner, full of empty Tupperware that once contained herbs and dried spices that Tops sold to addicts and partygoers.

“You’ve learned well from your lowly kin.” Virgil pushes a McDonalds bag that Tops had been using as a temporary trash can out of his path as he circles the room. “Thrift store clothes. Stolen food or bought with human money only. No madstones. No charms. No way for easy detection by legionnaires looking for vagrants. So what happened to your home? Your _original_ home, I mean.”

“I’m not fucking telling you.”

“Ah, so you’re still doing that?” Virgil chuckles. He sits in the old office chair that Tops rescued from being dumped at the Goodwill drop-off boxes. “The ‘I’m so mysterious and troubled and full of deeper meaning but I’m not going to tell you about it until the last moment’ routine. How very trite.”

Hearing it labeled so mundanely like a trope in a bad play makes the color rise to Tops’ face, even more than Virgil’s “lashing”. “I’m not doing it on purpose!”

“Considering how I pointed a gun at you and you stuck to your ‘persona’, that shows dedication.” For once, the smile disappears from Virgil’s face and he’s looking at Tops intensely, as if studying a rare bird. “Do you even realize what an oddity you are? Lowlies only have one skin. One shape. Not only that but you can push open gates, although it's not on the scale of a court mage. Still, the fact you can do it _at all_ is amazing when most lowlies are no better than a human when it comes to fae skills.”

Of course, Tops knows he’s a freak. He just doesn’t care. Being a freak of nature doesn’t put food in your stomach. If anything, being a freak paints a huge target on your back where he’d either be conscripted into serving a court or one of the mercenary clans for his abilities. No way in hell would Tops risk either of those options, so he kept his secrets close to his chest.

“What do you even _want_ from me?” Tops groans, “I feel like you either want to fight me, murder me, fuck me, or eat me for my youth.”

“I’ll table one of those options for later.” Virgil stands and his smile returns, shining on his face like sunlight. “Right now, I need you to help me go on a hunt.” Tops groans at the prospect of yet another one of Virgil’s bullshit tests but Virgil digs inside of his jacket. Tops steps back, thinking it’s going to be yet another weird sex toy. Instead, it’s three crumpled papers which Virgil promptly hands over.

The first page is a printout of a chat room, accompanied by the cluster of letters typical to such. Even though Tops is an average reader, it takes him a few minutes to parse out what’s being said.

 

[22:46:16] –zronin has set the topic to: Supernatural sightings in your town, NE only

[22:46:26] –ArmitageBabe joined

[22:46:52] <ChatBot>[zronin] im just looking into whatever local stuff youve seen or heard of

[22:46:56]<ArmitageBabe> ive been trying to get some pics of wood devils in my town but you have to go all the way into the mountains to get good ones

[22:47:08]<ArmitageBabe> or thats what I heard

[22:47:08]<Mulder4Scully> yea getting a pic is hard

[22:47:30]<TAZ> bullshit i got something good

[22:47:35]<zronin> Evidence, please?

[22:47:50]<TAZ> hold on

[22:48:36]<TAZ> here i got it on my webpage  ;)

[22:48:36]<TAZ> [check it dudes](http://static.snopes.com/app/uploads/2017/01/demon_feature-865x452.jpg)

 

The next page is a washed out picture. What Tops can make out is that it’s a grainy picture in orange and brown with dark, winged creature on it. Tops flips to the next page to see the messages posted after the image.

 

[22:50:16]<ArmitageBabe> wtf

[22:50:20]<Mulder4Scully> HOLY ****

[22:50:21]<deaddragon> this cant be real

[22:50:23]<e31saQueen> fake

[22:50:45]<prim3jack> super faaaaake!!

[22:51:03]<TAZ> its not fake. i took the picture myself.

[22:51:15]<zronin> Where did you take this?

[22:52:02] <TAZ> a park near where i live. it was like 3 in the morning when I saw it and I happened to have my camera with me.

 

The rest of the chat is a lot of back and forth with cries of “real” and “fake” with some biblical quotations thrown in for good measure.

“What do you think?” Virgil asks.

“I think humans have too much fucking time on their hands.” Tops snorts.

“True, but what about the picture?”

Tops finds the grainy picture to be uninteresting aside from the winged shadow standing amongst the rocky ground and skinny trees. Even the houses are ugly and the sky crisscrossed with telephone wires.

“It looks like it _could_ be Christianson Park.” Tops says. It had been one of the second places he tried selling. He had almost moved (or more accurately, long-term squatted) in the area until a goatman nearly knifed him. That had soured his opinion on the place.

“What do you mean ‘could be’?”

Tops shrugs. “The photo’s so shitty that I can’t be certain. It could be anywhere, really. Whoever ‘TAZ’ is didn’t put a lot of effort into this fake.”

Virgil nods. “Oh, it’s certainly fake, but its fakeness serves a real purpose.”

Tops feels his stomach tighten but he’s unsure as to why. “This is about angels isn’t it?”

“How astute!” Virgil grins, “We’ve wasted enough time. Let’s commence the hunt before our quarry migrates.”

Virgil eagerly leaves the room and Tops has no other choice but to follow. It’s not as if he’s accomplishing anything by remaining in the miserable condition of his ‘apartment’.

 

Tops is thankful he doesn’t have to go back to the homestead. He’s not sure his stomach would tolerate another jump for today. He has no idea how the migrant workers do it but they’ve earned some of his begrudging respect for what went on today. They don’t take Virgil’s car for the trip but find their way to the bus stop. Virgil never takes his eyes off his phone, texting intensely with an excited grin on his face. Tops looks over the smaller fae’s shoulders but the text language is all wingdings and emoticons. Either Virgil has a hex on his cellphone or he speaks his own little code and Tops doesn’t have the patience to decipher what that would possibly mean.

“What do you know about angels?” Virgil asks. The two of them sit in the back of the bus, ignored by the humans surrounding them.

“I know they’re vain idiots who care more about humans than anything else.” Tops sits next to the window, watching the ugly city scenery pass them by. His stomach growls when they drive past a food truck and he curses himself for not eating earlier.

“Some would say they’re our ancestors.”

A snort. Of course, Tops has heard of such a claim, but he doubts its truth. “Who cares?”

“So, you don’t know the entire story?” When Tops doesn’t answer, Virgil asks, “Have you never been to Sunday school?”

“I’ve never been to school. Period.”

“So, lowlies don’t have their own gods?”

“It doesn’t matter.” Tops knows the names of some lowly gods but doesn’t bother with the worship. Why bother? It’s not like they ever lifted a finger to protect their people and observing them in the first place was a complicated matter. Tops has enough problems as is.

“I suppose religion is far more focused in the homestead.” Virgil pauses in his texting, now only staring at the small cellphone screen. “As I learned in Sunday school, in the beginning of all things was the single entity known as SARAF. SARAF was all-powerful, a perfect circle who consumed their tail and existed throughout all reality.

“But SARAF dreaded stillness and thus wound itself around the tree of reality, splitting apart on its trunk. From its torn flesh and muscles came 888 angels and demons and from its spilt blood all the souls that would become humanity. From these 888 angels and demons came the fae. And in all of us people—humans, angels, demons, fae—we are all a part of SARAF, who is neither dead nor alive but simply eternal.”

Virgil looks away from the cellphone, finally turning his blue eyes to Tops. “Does any of this sound familiar to you?”

Tops’ attention is still on the window. The bus has crossed through the downtown area and heading into another long stretch of neighborhoods. Trees are popping up more often as they inch closer to the suburbs. Familiar? No. Boring? Definitely.”

“You’re determined to act like a complete teenager, aren’t you?”

Tops looks away from the window, glaring at the other fae. “I’m not a teenager.”

“You could have fooled me.”

Tops clenches his fist rather than say something that might have him end up in a ditch. “What does this stupid story have to do with your chat room of gullible idiots?”

“I’m getting to that,” Virgil says with a thin smile. “In the perpetual absence-presence of SARAF, angels must thrive on the collective power of rumor, conspiracy, and desperate faith of those who have inherited the Earth.” The pale boy holds up the printout of the ‘angelic’ image. “This image is false and the angel within in it is equally false, but the _belief_ that this could be an angel is enough to draw real ones into such a location.”

In other words, it’s a con for humanity and angels on the part of a god who couldn’t be bothered to confirm or deny their own existence.  

“And people call _me_ a rat.” Tops scoffs.

Their stop is across the street from an elementary school. Children are ambling around the playground while others are lined up for the dismissal buses. Virgil doesn’t linger by the school grounds and immediately starts walking down the road in direction of Christianson Park. As Tops follows, he can easily recount the familiar neighborhoods and trees of his old haunt.

“I made sure the photo circulated for some time,” Virgil puts his cellphone away and walks down the street with his head held high and hands in his pockets like the smug prick he is. “Sometimes I would claim to be the photographer or that I would have found the link to the website. I pinpointed them to Christianson in the end so hopefully”—the pale fae smiles wickedly—“the trap will yield some results.” He pauses, looking at Tops. “Have you ever encountered an angel or devil before?”

 _Not alive,_ but the last thing Tops wants to think about is the divine corpse he saw only a few days ago in that gory basement. “Don’t really care either way.” It's not like angels had a big impact on Tops’ life before he became involved with Virgil or his nonsense.

Virgil shrugs. “You’re not missing much. Those creatures only attend the Courts and rarely speak. In truth, angels and demons are very tied to their primal natures. We fae may go against the wishes of their own bodies for a higher purpose but angels and demons are slaves to their own wills. In that aspect, angels are no better than animals.”

Tops sees the butchered angel again, hanging off the hooks in the cellar like a carved up cattle ready to be packaged and sent to the supermarket. He rarely dreams but there is always a thought in the back of his mind that reminds him of how pristine the dead angel was. Typically blood carries a scent—even quicksilver fae blood—but not for an angel. Just an odorless carnage, similar to that of a well-cleaned abattoir.

“I don’t see the big deal about them.” Tops mumbles. He struggles to push the images from his mind, locking them away. 

Virgil smiles wryly. “You wouldn’t. Look, we’re here.”

Christianson Park is just as ugly as it has always been. There are only two stone benches and a can overflowing with garbage. The trees have always been thin and scrubby with roots fighting for purchase through the rocky ground. Not even dryads want to inhabit it unless they’re gluttons for starvation and pain. The only thing that’s thrived are the bushes, forming sprawling hedges and elbow-high walls of nettles and brambles. There are no signs, no scenic flowers, or any indication it’s a park. For anyone driving by, it could just be an untamable vacant lot where a house burned down in the past and no one bothered rebuilding.

Virgil doesn’t gawk at the park. He strolls right in, braving the ugly hedge of stiff nettles and thorns and moving down as the grass becomes a sandy bank. Tops stands at the top of the bank, watching the broad waters of the Connecticut River flow by.

Today there are no waterhorses lingering by the shore in the search for prey. Instead, two angels mill about in the shallow part of the river like ducks in a pond. The angels are similar in description to the stores Tops’ mother had told him around the fire pit: perfect bodies, large wings, and yet missing a key feature that prevents true humanity. The angel with warm brown skin is missing a face while the angel with a tan lacks arms.

Tops’ instincts kick into high gear, rooting him to the ground. Virgil takes two steps to the water’s edge when he realizes he isn’t being followed.

Virgil smiles. “What’s wrong? Afraid of biblical repercussions?”

“No.” Virgil’s smirk widens. “They’re _looking_ right at us. They know we’re here— _look out_!”

The paler angel spread their wings and takes off, leaving the water as quickly as any bird. The brown angel remains, moving out of the river and shaking the water off their wings like a dog coming out of the rain.

Virgil pays no attention to the creature. The good humor evaporates from his face as his eyes remain on Tops.

“Don’t you know anything _?_ ” Virgil’s voice is a low whisper. He points to the angel. “These things are dumber than pigeons. Don’t you think they smell the blood of their kin on me? Don’t you think they hear their screams in my skin? These stupid things don’t have any self-preservation beyond what powers they owe their allegiance to. Watch, you fool.”

Virgil turns, putting his attention on the angel. The angel stares at him, wings spread out wide and head tilted.

“You,” it says with the voice of a young man. Despite not having a mouth, the muscles in its throat move.

“Yes. Me.” Virgil says, “What will you preach to me today?”

The air around Virgil and the angel vibrates. Tops’ ears feel like they might pop and the gooseflesh rises on his bare arms. The tree leaves shake but Tops doesn’t run, mostly because he’s afraid Virgil will kill him if he does.

“O forsaken child with a gold and silver crown,” The angel moves its head, turning its eyeless face to Tops, “Already thou weave troubles held in a bent claw. The white deer prowls Danish streets, scenting her way. The false hag of the sea hunts, spilling her pearls.”

Virgil nods. “That’s definitely clearer than last time.”

Virgil takes a step toward the angel. The being bends its head down, close enough to kiss. Virgil places ah and on the angel’s throat and there’s silence. A few seconds pass until the angel gags and shrieks. Its wings spasm and it collapses on the ground with blood violently running from its ears and other orifices.

Virgil stands over the angel and shakes his head. “What a miserable excuse for an angel. Couldn’t even figure out how to use ‘thee’ and ‘thou’ properly.” He looks to Tops, ignoring the bleeding out divinity. “You still with me, or are you planning on running?”

Tops’ head is spinning. He can’t even register what the angel said or why it was looking at him (though ‘look’ is just a rough estimate since the thing didn’t even have a _face_ ). He wants to give Virgil some witty retort but instead, he’s gazing at the dying angel.

“What…did you _do?_ ” Tops stammers. His head starts to throb, beginning yet another migraine that starts at the top of his skull and radiates downward.

“A little talent of mine.” Virgil doesn’t wait for Tops to regain his courage. He rushes over to Tops, seizing the other fae’s hand and dragging him over to the angel.

Virgil seizes Tops hand, dragging him over to the dying angel. As Tops gets closer to the angel, the air seems to become thicker. His ears start to pop and the migraine intensifies as if trying to force him back. And yet Tops can’t fight against the pull.

Virgil has a wide smile on his face. “Look, the soul is leaving its body.”

The angel convulses and trembles. Blood wells on the front of its faceless head and skin breaks, exposing warm gore and innards. A blue sphere crawls out, evacuating the body and finally shooting into the sky like a reverse meteor. It punches through the clouds and in the blink of an eye, it’s gone.

“Thus with the soul gone, the love of SARAF also leaves.” Virgil chuckles. Tops still tries to pull but for such a small fae, Virgil’s grip is viselike. “Already in the realm of spheres, this angel’s soul will break down and become an egg once more to be reborn as either an angel or a demon to maintain the fixed 888 number.”

Then Virgil pushes Tops’ hand against the flesh of the dead angel. Tops is too shocked to pull away as his fingers meet divine flesh. The angelic corpse isn’t even cold. In fact, it’s burning hot like touching a fallen star.

“Tell me what it feels like,” Virgil whispers in his ear.

“W-why are you doing this?” Tops stammers. The angel’s flesh is getting hotter by the second.

“Because you have _talent_.” Virgil is no longer looking at Tops but the dead angel. His eyes are wide, too amazed and intrigued to be his playful impish self. “You have the power to be something better than just another fae sitting on their ass watching the clock tick down. _Look at it!”_ He says the latter with a snarl when Tops’ brain finally registers when is going on and tries to pull away.

The angel’s flesh is becoming unbearably hot. Tops thinks of the times he burned himself cooking and tries to tug away again. Virgil still holds him in place. The golden hue of the angelic corpse finally moves. It flows not outward to dissipate into nothing but toward Tops’ fingers. It moves into the fingertips and then steadily invades. Every vein in Tops’ arm is illuminated, filling with a golden light. The light is slow at first and then quickly moves, with Tops’ skin greedily sucking up the light like a thirsty man in the desert.

And then it hits him.

The light hits his heart, pouring adrenaline right into his veins. Tops screams, yanks his arm away from Virgil and stumbles backward only to fall over. His heart bounces around in his chest, racing as if it’s trying to break the sound barrier. The veins in his arms are still glowing as the golden light is still flooding it, climbing its way up his arms and into his heart. It feels like every drug he’s taken over the past five years coagulated into one shot of something indescribably magical and so godsdamned _wonderful._

He’s no longer hungry. Or thirsty. Or even achy. Fuck, he feels nothing and everything.

He feels like a blind man finally being able to see. He feels like the lame getting a chance to walk. He feels like the starved getting a meal for the first time.

How the hell did he live before?

“Fuck.” is the only way Tops can summarize his feelings.

The golden light fades but Tops can’t move. He’s still trembling and his brain is still trying to discern what even in the fuck is going on anymore. Virgil chuckles at the sight and walks over, offering Tops a hand. Tops takes it, forcing himself to stand.

“Powerful stuff, isn’t it?” Virgil chuckles.

“What _was_ that?” Tops gasps.

“Just the dregs of a divine soul.” Virgil says, “When an angel dies, the ‘core’ goes for rebirth but the leftovers—personality, memories, likes and dislikes—that remains here.”

“Fucking _fantastic_.” Tops moves to the water’s edge, avoiding the angel’s corpse and looking at his reflection. The swelling from his black eye has disappeared, although there’s still some discoloration from the bruise. “It’s even _healing_ me. Gods.” He looks at Virgil. “No wonder you’re rich.”

“Money has little to do with it.” He turns his head. “Look alive. We have company.”

Virgil steps aside as fae move in, walking carefully down the bank and approaching the divine corpse. Tops is so used to seeing the gremlins running the show in the abandoned theater that he’s forgotten the other fae that shore up the rest of the numbers in the gang. This group is made entirely of goatmen wearing rubber smocks and carrying garbage bags. They move into the area quickly, scooping up the spilled angelic blood from the sand and prepping the body for transport. They don’t bother cutting up the corpse; only finding a way to stuff the whole thing in the garbage bag. If Tops was more curious and less nauseous, he’d ask them why.

Virgil shows no interest in the process. For him, this is just another day. He walks up the bank and Tops (not wanting to look at a corpse any longer) follows closely behind.

“You know, in ancient days,” Virgil remarks, “anyone who would want to be mage would have to hunt down and murder an angel. Only those who had eaten divine flesh were worthy of learning.”

“I can’t see myself as a mage.” Prospect had already mentioned it to Tops but airplane gremlins were full of suspicions about everyday things. They’d look at a computer and think it’s the work of sorcery. “I don’t have the talent for magic. And anyway, don’t mages get snapped up by the Courts when they’re young?”

“Courts…” Virgil snorts with disregard, then smiles fondly at Tops. “I think we can both agree that Courts are outdated and idiotic. The only reason you weren’t immediately picked out is because they didn’t see your potential, which I’ve only started to unlock.”

 _Potential._ That word makes Tops’ stomach sink in anxious fear. No one has ever used it with his name in the same sentence. Hell, no one has ever used it in reference to any lowly. A lowly’s life was just to exist as their ancestors and to change anything about that livelihood would be the closest thing to heresy.

“You have someone to teach me?” Tops asks.

“Yes, though we have a trip to make.” The ‘entrance’ of the park has two vans. One is meant to block people from wandering in and the other for backup in case there’s a problem. A goatman waits by one of the vans, smoking a cigarette. Virgil raises a hand to one of the goatmen waiting by the cars. “Can you drive us someplace?”

The goatman nods eagerly. “Of course, sir!”

The car isn’t as fancy as Virgil’s Cadillac but it’s still nicer than any of the cars Tops has had the displeasure of being in the back of.

“So where is this mage?” Tops asks.

Virgil grins. “The best sort of place.”

 

 


	2. 1.6 Million Square Feet of Absolute Crap

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The 'f' word is said during this chapter, because some people are dickheads like that.

“Really? A _mall_?”

Virgil doesn’t look up and continues sipping his cup of syrupy juice and ice that’s passing as a smoothie. Tops sits across from him, barely tolerating the hard metal chairs of the food court. The only positive is that they’re in the back of the food court; far away from the stickiness and noise of the many children that plague these shopping centers. Still, the air is polluted with the smells of the food court meals: greasy lamb from the Greek place, old meat from the McDonalds, and the ever-tempting beef chow mein (Not that Tops would stoop so low as to _eat_ such things).

Virgil finishes slurping down a quarter of his slushie before asking, “Do you have a problem with partaking in the great American experience?”

“Yes, because awful food and fluorescent lights make me think ‘America’.” Tops snorts. He glowers at the masses of children just wandering around without supervision. He hopes a vampire makes a quick meal of them. Thin the herd a bit. “What are we doing here besides indulging in a shrine to your poor fashion choices?”

“Well, this is the only Orange Julius in the area,” Virgil says, “but also I’d like you to use your eyes: notice anything unusual about this place?”

Tops looks through the crowds. If there aren’t throngs of children, there are sweaty adults and exhausted teenagers behind the counters or lingering under the fluorescent lights. It only takes him seconds to realize that they’re all human.

“No vampires.” Tops concludes, “What gives? Malls are always crawling with them, or zombies.” Malls are the perfect habitat for vampires and zombies: a consistent flow of easy prey, abandoned storefronts that are perfect for squatting, and huge areas with no sunlight. “Unless they’re in the parking garage at this time of day?”

“They’re not.” Virgil slurps down the rest of his frozen sugar slush. “You must not feel it, but this entire mall is the territory of a very powerful fae. They don’t allow for competition from vampires and zombies on their happy hunting grounds.”

“So, it’s the mage and since it knows you, it’s ‘allowing’ us to stay here.” Tops guesses.

“Look how smart you are when you apply yourself!” Virgil stands and instead of heading for the trash can, he moves toward a trio of teen girls.  

The girls are standing outside of a Miller’s Outpost and dressed like typical mallrats with backpacks, plaid, and T-shirts of bands that Tops doesn’t recognize or care about.

“Killer sunglasses,” Virgil says to one.

The girls are nervous as if being approached by a rare animal. They chatter amongst each other and finally push one forward like an offering for the pyre. It’s a girl with chubby thighs, frizzy hair, and not enough confidence to look Virgil in the eye.

“Um, h-hey.” She says and it’s a miracle she can manage even that.

“I think I’ve seen you around,” Virgil says.

The girl nervously nods. “Y-yeah…”

Tops isn’t sure what game Virgil is playing at but he isn’t interested in it. He sits at the table watching Virgil make small talk with the teens. He had originally hoped Virgil was pumping the girls for information, but no. Instead, he makes full-blown conversation with them and starts walking away.

So of course, Tops follows.

“Who’s that?” asks one of the girls when she sees Tops. She has thick braids and a pig-like nose.

“My stepbrother.” Virgil says, “Just ignore him. He’s…antisocial.”

The girls laugh too and that’s the end of acknowledging Tops’ presence. The girls return their attention to Virgil. They’re nervous and chatty but Virgil is oozing charisma, charming the humans like any predatory fae on a hunt. Virgil keeps up the conversation, alluding to attending the same school and sharing the same petty interests. At least Virgil is doing all the talking. Tops wouldn’t know where to begin with these kids. Hell, he isn’t even sure what kind of music kids are into. Back home it was nothing but banjoes, jugs, and washboards.

Sometimes Tops misses it, but he pushes that thought away just as quickly. There’s no point in lingering on these thoughts anymore.

“You should totally come minigolfing with us!” says Braids, “There’s a cool place on the third floor.”

“We’re supposed to just go with Michael and them.” mutters Thighs.

“Michael’s too busy fucking around with Brad.” Freckles snorts, “He’s an ass anyway.”

“Yeah, fuck ‘em,” says Plaid.

Once the girls are in agreement about ditching their male companions, Virgil and Tops accompany them to the elevator. The minigolf arcade takes up three storefronts on the third floor and is mostly darkness punctuated occasionally by neon lights and glow-in-the-dark golf balls. The girls putt a few rounds and clumsily flirting with Virgil. Plaid tries to start a conversation with Tops but Tops doesn’t indulge her, pretending to be focused on the game. Eventually, the girls give up and saunter off to the juice bar to see if they can weasel free drinks out the employees.

Tops waits until the girls are out of earshot to speak to Virgil. “What’s the point of all this?”

“Quiet now.” Virgil is bent over, focusing on trying to get his ball into a plastic hippo’s mouth. “If I land this hole, I’ll have enough tickets for a plastic fan.”

Virgil putts with the finesse of Tiger Woods but just as the ball glides along the neon velvet, Tops thumps his staff on the ground. The slight vibration is just enough to misdirect the golf ball, causing to rest inches away from the hole.

Virgil looks to Tops, cocks an eyebrow. “You know I have it on good authority that I could scalp you for such a thing. You know how much I love plastic nonsense.”

“I’ve noticed. You’re wearing enough Dollar Store crap for the both of us.” Tops says, “What’s the point of all this? You know we’re not supposed to…” He gestures to the girls. “Let them notice us. Unless we’re hunting.” He pauses, “ _Are_ we hunting?”

“Not right now.” Virgil points to the arcade entrance, “Why leave now? The fun is just beginning.”

Three boys enter the arcade, muscling past the employees and heading directly for them. Tops guesses from their awful fashion sense alone that they’re the male companions the girls ditched earlier.

Hair Gel immediately goes for Tops. “The fuck’s your problem, fag?” He pokes a finger in Tops’ chest. “You think taking other people’s girls and acting like you’re hot shit is funny?”

“Yeah, fucking fags,” grunts Body Spray.

It takes Tops a minute for him to register what these ugly children are saying to him. “Excuse me?”

“Yeah, we saw you fucking preps take our girls!” Pizza Face growls.

“Michael! Jared!” Braids flounces over with the other girls. “What are you doing? Why are you being such dicks?”

Hair Gel sucks his teeth and points to Tops and Virgil like they’re dog shit on the bottom of his expensive sneakers. “Because you took off with these jackasses is why!”

“You guys are _such_ jealous pricks!” says Freckles, “We were just having fun.”

“You were too busy being idiots anyways.” Braids huffs, “You guys don’t _have_ to fight every guy you see just for us.”

Thighs mumbles something but keeps eye contact with the floor.

Tops isn’t sure about a lot of things but he’s _definitely_ sure he doesn’t want to take part in this Sweet Valley High episode that’s going on around him. Judging by the barely hidden excitement on Braids’ face, she wants nothing more than two boys to fight over her. Freckles seems to genuinely dislike their companions and perhaps wants Tops and Virgil to trounce them. Only Thighs seems to be uninterested, keeping eye contact with the floor.

“I, for one, am not interested in anybody.” Tops declares. He looks to Virgil, “In fact, we need to get going. Right, Virgil? Virgil?”

Virgil (being the unhelpful bastard he is) is putting at the next hole.

“Oh, so you think our girls aren’t _good_ _enough_ , huh?” Hair Gel demands.

“Whatever.” Tops grunts.

“Let’s kick their ass!” says Pizza Face. He moves toward Virgil with bloodlust in his eyes and a fist aimed at Virgil’s jaw.

Before the punch can even land, Virgil looks the human in the eye. “ _Please_ don’t touch me.”

Magic immediately oozes out from Virgil, sliding over the human and stuttering his movements. Pizza Face’s fist stops and he backs off like he’s touched a live wire. Some primal part of his pea-sized brain realizes he’s encountered something more than. Something not worth fucking with just for the cold affection of a schoolgirl.

“Shit.” Pizza Face retreats to his pals muttering, “F-forget this.”

With Pizza Face’s retreat, the mood changes immediately. The teens regard Virgil with looks of nervous fear, muttering amongst themselves. Even Braids looks like her stomach is in knots.

“Yeah, fuck this!” Hair Gel glowers at the girls. “Good luck getting a ride home, bitch.” The boys then quickly stalk off, leaving the arcade.

“Asshole!” Braids calls. When the boys don’t return, Freckles and her chase after them.

The parade of teens move but Tops knows they’ll never forget the unease they felt. None of them will talk about it of course. For now, they’ll continue their little drama elsewhere in the mall. Not that Tops cares. He’s glad that he doesn’t have to put up with such hormone-addled situations, turning his back on adolescence and all its stupidities.

“What was that?” Thighs asks.

Thighs stands across from Tops, having remained while the others ran off. She gazes at him with wide green eyes. For the first time, Tops has a long look at her face and realizes she’s younger than the other girls. He had assumed that the girls were all in high school, but Thighs can’t be older than thirteen or fourteen. It’s more likely that she’s a younger sister tagging along with the bigger kids in the hope of receiving acceptance.

The minigolf arcade is dark and the dull roar of commercial muzik has faded. The employees have disappeared, or maybe they were never there at all. Tops can’t remember the faces of anyone, from the guy who handled the ticket counter to the employee at the juice bar. It’s all turned fuzzy like an old film played too many times. Even the neon lights are dull.  

“Go home, kid.” Tops says.

It’s a ridiculous and dangerous notion. Whatever fae considers the mall its territory has marked this human as fair game. To interfere with another fae’s marked prey is a social sacrilege akin to sneezing on a served meal…but Tops has never given much thought to traditions. He was born and raised a mountain hick, so he says the words without regret.

He says the words while looking into the girl’s green eyes.

“You did something.” The girl look to Virgil with dilated, fascinated eyes, “How did you do it?”

Virgil’s lips are curved like a sickle. Tops’ skin crawls to see him wear such a grin.

The air shifts. Something is moving toward them and even with Tops’ dull senses, he feels an entity violate the space in the dark arcade and enter the area without doors or windows.

A painted pierrot stands behind the girl. Their face is painted white and marked with a catlike clownishness, with a dark nose and whiskers and blood red lips. Their clothes are baggy and have a jester’s horns with bells on the end. They hold balloons in one hand and a stuffed pink pony in the other.

“You know how.” says the pierrot. Their voice is soft, even softer than Virgil’s, but a bone-deep sense in Tops tells him that it’s wrong. Everything about this fae from voice to appearance is _wrong._ They’re far too tall and their eyes are too knowing for them to be a _true_ child.

The girl moves toward the pierrot as if drawn by magnetism. Tops reaches out to her but Virgil grabs his other hand, tugging him back. Virgil puts a finger to his lips, still smiling sweetly but Tops can’t focus on him. He can’t look away from the girl and the pierrot.

“Hi there, Ashley.” says the pierrot, “Looks like your friends left you.”

“They’re not my friends.” says the girl, “They only hang out with me because Michael’s my brother.” 

“That’s sad. Have a balloon.”

The girl takes the offered balloon. She smiles and the pierrot smiles back. Then the pierrot drops the stuffed pony on the ground. Immediately it springs to life and starts galloping around. The girl spins in place, her eyes eagerly following it.

“They’re coming back though.” the girl says but she’s already gone, lost to the magic of the moving pony and the kindness of the balloon gift.

“I’ll stay with you until they come back.”

“Okay!”

The pierrot points into the arcade’s darkness and a hole open. The hole shines a red light, playing soft merry-go-round music and exuding warmth. The pony dances into the hole and the girl eagerly follows. As soon as she steps through, it swallows her and Tops, Virgil, and the strange pierrot are in the darkness once more.

“Tops,” Virgil says, “this is my sibling, Alichino.”

Tops does not answer. His eyes are still concentrated on the patch of darkness where the girl disappeared, but there is no hint of her. The merry-go-round music is gone along with the red glow. Maybe she’s gone forever. Tops shudders and shakes off his nerves. _You’ve seen worse,_ he tells his panicking brain. After coming this far, it’s going to take more than a minor feat of magic to scare him.

Alichino waves and gives a saintly smile. Tops wonders if such gentle yet uneasy smiles are taught or genetic. He’s likely to believe both.

“I never thought of Virgil as having siblings.” Tops hopes the frivolity of his words will massage away the tension in his stomach.

“Me neither,” Alichino says, “I like to imagine big brother springing fully formed from mother’s firing oven.”

“A mother too.” Tops looks to Virgil. “I’m learning all sorts of things about you today.”

Virgil’s smile disappears for a fraction of a second but it’s quickly smoothed over by his cheerfully benign tone. “Forgive them.” he says, “My sibling does ramble on a bit. They have a poet’s soul.”

Alichino makes a noncommittal noise in their throat, idly playing with their jester horns. “What do you need, big brother?”

“I think we should discuss things in a more appropriate meeting place, don’t you think, dear?” Virgil says. Alichino blinks like a confused little dog and Virgil sighs, “Take us down into the playpen, would you?”

“Oh? Oh, yes!” Alichino nods, bells ringing. “I see, big brother! I’ll do that right away!”

Tops gets _that_ sensation again—the conscious awareness of space being violated once more—and a tear spirals out from the center of the floor. The spiral carves its way through the black carpet of the minigolf arcade and sinks down. Clinging to the hole’s wall are stairs with a polished metal railing. A bright red light shines from the very bottom, making the bland metal of the stairs and railing look hellish. Tops looks over the edge but the bottom is covered in red mist.

Virgil pats Tops on the back. “Guests first.”

“Call me a cowardly human,” Tops murmurs, “but mother always told to _avoid_ going down into infernal pits.”

“If you listened to your mother at all, you wouldn’t be a drug-dealing criminal, now would you?” Virgil says.

 _Your mother would likely say the same,_ but Tops isn’t too much of a smartass to say that aloud.

“Shall I see you at the bottom then, big brother and stranger?” Alichino asks.

Virgil nods to his brother. “Of course, dear Alichino.”

Alichino smiles and jumps off the edge. They glide slowly down, buoyed by the balloons. Tops watches their slow descent as they disappear into the crimson mists below.

“I still don’t see the resemblance.” Tops says once Alichino is out of earshot.

“Most don’t, but rest assured that darling Alichino is my precious younger sibling.” Virgil nudges Tops. “No more delays. We have a timetable to keep.”

Virgil can hurry him all he likes but Tops still makes a slow descent down the stairs. The railing lets him feel some modicum of security but the steps are still uneven in size, height, and length as if carved out from the wall by a spoon. Once Virgil follows him down a few steps, the entry hole slides shut like an eclipsed sun.

“So this entire mall belongs to your little sibling?” Tops asks.

“Yes, but not for the reasons you think.” Virgil says, “Little Alichino is a sweetheart but they’re not very social. It’s also very ideal for teaching as Alichino is one of the most skilled mages I have ever encountered.”

“…say what now?”

Tops wobbles as he steps off the stairs and onto the bottom floor. The floor is soft and carpeted, paradoxically soft enough to sleep on and yet firm enough to easily walk on. Toys are scattered in tall, near-pyramids and the walls are implanted with curved screens of various sizes. Wires hang from underneath it, hooking into Super Nintendos and Sega Genesises. It’s a clutter of childhood with Super Soakers in one pile, Tamagotchis in another, a large plastic machine that looked like it could spawn arm-long Creepy Crawlers, and enormous Beanie Babies more fit for a titanic child.

Alichino sits on the head of a giant Hello Kitty, who is offering Tops and Virgil a plush cupcake. 

Tops looks at Alichino and then to Virgil.

“You have got to be kidding me.” Tops pronounces.

“Not in the slightest.” Virgil says, “You see, as many things sweet Alichino can do, they are still so young and precious. I need someone a bit more…” He makes a wishy-washy gesture with his hand that Tops knows all too well.

“Expendable.” Tops snorts, “The word you’re looking for is ‘expendable’.”

Virgil rolls his eyes. “Nothing so _dramatic_ , Tops!” he snickers, “I need someone who knows the nitty-gritty of things and what is the point of all that lovely knowledge if it goes unused? Right, darling Alichino?”

“Yes!” Alichino says with a wide grin, “Correct, big brother.”

Virgil smiles proudly at his younger sibling. “So eager to teach!” Then he looks to Tops with far less approval, “And you have to be eager to learn unless you’d rather return to the garbage dump I found you in.”

There’s no way in hell Tops would return to that dump. With all the nouveau riche kids that likely got injured that night, the legionnaires would be looking for him. He’s only been lucky avoiding them because they’re corrupt fucks that turn a blind eye to the Bridgewaters.

Of course, Tops has never learned magic either. There’s no guarantee he’ll even be _good_ at it. There hadn’t been any mages back home unless you counted the ‘kitchen mages’ that performed healing and minor feats and there was a strict rule of there being one kitchen mage per commune. None of them could light a fire with just a word or turn water into fish. Even in the mountains, too much concentrated magic would make a fae pop up on patrolling legionnaire radars brighter than any beacon in the darkness. Anyone with talent had to be shipped elsewhere, likely the homestead or the underground. 

Tops strokes his staff. In all the hurrying from place to place, it’s easy to forget its presence. If anything, its presence seems only more solidified once he’s anxious.

“How long am I stuck here for?” he asks.

There’s no answer. Tops looks to his side and see Virgil has been gone, likely slipped away while he was lost in his darkening thoughts.

Tops looks to Alichino. “Where’d he go?” Even if Virgil disappeared, he had expected to hear _footsteps_ at least.

“Big brother wanted out,” Alichino says, “so I let him.”

“Out?”

Alichino shrugs. “Big brother has a business to run, so he can come and go as he pleases.” They tilt their head. “I mean, that’s obvious, isn’t it? You’re not very smart if you don’t realize that.”

“I didn’t come down here to be lectured by a pretend toddler.” Tops says.

“I didn’t let you down here to be lectured by someone as ignorant as a toddler.” Alichino’s warm smile disappears and their face turns emotionless. They look ghostly in the low red light of the playroom. “Dear big brother wants me to teach you how to be a proper hoodoo man but you’re just a dumb idiot playing dumb games. Nothing’s real about you. Not your clothes. Not your hair. Nothing. I think it’s all a big waste of my time.”

“Come down here and say that, you fucking rugrat,” Tops says, freshly reminded of how much he _despises_ little kids.   

Alichino doesn’t move but there’s a rustle behind Tops. Tops rolls to the left just as a teddybear climbs out of a pile. The ragged fluff monster doesn’t give up, chasing after Tops without rest.

“You know, I could be playing Bust-a-Move right now.” Alichino pouts.

Tops moves out of the way of the teddy bear but a small wave of Transformers-knock offs charge at him. They’re made of cheap plastic but they’re child unsafe with sharp edges and dangerously pointed weapons. They jump onto Tops’ head and arms, biting at his clothes and pulling hair. Tops curses, yanking off the annoying robots but it’s not enough. More toys are joining the fray, trying to trip him or climb in his mouth.

“And I just got Donkey Kong Country 2!” Alichino continues, “I heard it’s even better than Donkey Kong Country and I’ve been waiting all week to play it. But _no_ , I have to deal with _you_.”

Tops is running blind. There are tiny plastic hands in his eyes and Top is sure there’s a Cabbage Patch Doll trying to pull his eyebrow hair out. He trips over something hard and plastic and falls into a pile of red plush. Tops struggles with the plush and the miniature plastic assault, tearing off a tiny robot going for his eyes.

Breathing hard, Tops thinks of the words of his raccoon mother. His mother had been in charge of the safety drills, educating every commune adult and child in the best ways to evade the legionnaires. _Just move. Don’t focus on the words, just keep moving,_ his raccoon mother would say. The legionnaires were trained to root out stubborn communes, using sound to confuse the fleeing lowlies. They charmed boomboxes and stereo to make it seem like there were hundreds of legionnaires in the woods instead of a handful, making lowlies think they were surrounded. 

Deep in the plush pile, Tops remembers his lowly ways. He foregoes pulling at the toys by hand. He foregoes hands at all. He tears at the stomach of a plush baby doll with his fangs and rips his way through thread and flame retardant stuffing.  He sheds his common skin, pulling everything he knows into himself and becomes a vicious crow. He flies out into the air, a free animal.

The toys can’t hang on. They’re used to wrangling humanoid shapes, not animals. They fall to the playpen floor, unsure of what to do. Tops doesn’t remain in the air long. He dive-bombs toward Alichino, sweeping like a vicious warplane on a mission.

Alichino sees him and doesn’t move. Hello Kitty moves forward instead, massive mitten-paws reaching for Tops. Tops swerves from her grasp, flapping toward Alichino again.

Alichino leaps off but doesn’t fall. They float in the air, watching Tops move as Hello Kitty acts the part of King Kong—swiping and swatting at the angry crow Tops has become.

Tops breathes in slowly. One more chance. He moves at Hello Kitty this time. An inch away from her face, he sheds his crow skin and becomes humanoid once more. Staff in hand, he swings at Alichino like a mad batter.

Alichino spins away, still floating. Tops glides through the air, skidding across the soft playpen store.

“Flying is bullshit!” Tops insists.

Alichino only smiles and Tops knows this is the true challenge.

He can’t hit Alichino. No, the fake child is too small and fast and the toys are even worse. Even with a few seconds on the playpen floor, Hello Kitty and all her plush comrades are coming for him. The eviscerated muppets and soft baby dolls are sewing themselves back together again. They have a haggard zombie-like walk but they’re full of Alichino’s magic and determination.

So, a change of plans then. First thing’s first: getting the plastic and plush fuckers to back up.

Tops puts on the skin of a skunk once more. He only has enough time to change before Hello Kitty falls on him. He lets the titanic bitch do so. Smothered or not, he sprays a long putrid stream right onto her white face.

A murderous scream cuts through the air.

And then everything stops. Everything.

Hello Kitty slumps over, now dead. She’s not the only one to go down because all the toys collapse, falling into one big pile. Suddenly the reality of smothering stars Tops in the face. Hello Kitty doesn’t weigh too much but its too much ofr a small skunk with the weight of _every_ attacking toy piling on. He gasps, struggling to move as the skunk’s instinctual panic sets in.

Fear grips his stomach. He stars immediately shedding the skin, emerging hands and feet pushing and shoving through the hot, soft darkness.

He’s thankful to the gods when the weight lifts. Alichino is hovering above him, moving the soiled Hello Kitty away from the pile. They lift their hand and the gigantic toy moves with them, following each subtle gesture. Alichino works their magic, fingers deftly moving like a loom mistress—pulling apart wet skunk spray on the soft fur of the toy. They twist and flex their fingers with surgical focus until Hello Kitty is well and clean again.

Alichino balls up the wet stench and opens a red portal. They toss it away like any other garbage. Out of sight, out of mind.

Tops gulps air and thanks the gods he hasn’t been suffocated by such childish nonsense.

“You lasted longer than the others,” Alichino says.

A worrisome compliment but Tops is too dizzy to be concerned about it now. “So what’s my prize?” His small victory allows for some cockiness.

“You get to play with me,” Alichino sets Hello Kitty back to the ground and lowers themself to the ground. “If your head’s not too empty, maybe you’ll learn something too.”

“Edutainment.” Tops snorts, “Just what I never wanted.”


	3. So You Want to be a Mage?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Triggers for child death, abductions, and general trauma. Nothing too graphic but still, it starts at "Tear gas." Also, a warning for underaged smoking? I have no idea if that's a potential trigger but maybe just one of modern social values lol

“So you want to be a mage?”

“‘Want’ is stretching it. ‘Conscripted into’ is more like it.”

Tops is attempting to sit on a pile of Beanie Babies, which is a futile enterprise. The stuffed animals are too soft for him to get comfortable but he does get small satisfaction from rubbing his ass all over Alichino’s precious toys. Alichino is perched, this time in the lap of a large stuffed lamb puppet with an odd face.

“Want is everything, numbnuts!” Alichino folds their arms. “The first rule of magic is all about intent. Nothing happens without purpose and magic wills everything we do. Why do you think big brother was able to leave here without a problem?”

“Because he’s an overzealous prick who wants everyone to think he’s busy but likes jerking people around instead?” Tops snorts.

A Transformer jumps onto Tops’ head, yanking on his bandana. Tops growls and grabs the plastic robot, tossing it away.

“Gods, I _get_ it already!” Tops snarls, “All-powerful god-child bastard with magic shit! Enough with the demon toys! You’re like a bad Joe Dante movie!” 

“I don’t like anybody badmouthing big brother.” Alichino is nibbling on their thumb, squinting at Tops. “Anybody who badmouths big brother or big sister gets Megatron or Optimus and if they really badmouth big brother or big sister they get _Unicron._ ”

“I assume that means something to you.”

“You’re so stupid. I can’t believe you made it five minutes.” Alichino holds out their hand and a remote control flies into it. They turn on a screen, filling the playpen with blue light. “Look, you dummy.”

A human girl with bright brown eyes and chubby thighs sits in a small playroom. She’s surrounded by balloons, ponies, and books. She reads from a novel, looking more comfortable than she ever did hanging out with Braids and Freckles.

“Magic knows everything you could want and more.” Alichino says, “Glamour just amplifies it, concentrates it into what we want the humans to see. That’s how I know all the things Ashley likes, from novels about wizard boys to My Little Pony. If I wanted, I could make my glamour things she doesn’t like: spiders, crowds, and getting even fatter. It’s all about what _I_ want. My intent.”

Like a spider, you could spin magic’s web anyway you want, Tops thinks. He looks at Alichino, trying to pretend he can’t see another face in the human girl’s. “Turn it off.”

“I’m not done yet, stupid.” Alichino turns on another screen. On this one, Freckles and Braids are arguing with Hair Gel and Body Spray. “Magic let me take her because they’re all so stupid, caught up in their dumb lives. They won’t realize Ashley’s missing until it’s too late. They’ll freak out but magic won’t let them find her. Even though the humans are blind as baby mice, magic flows through them like that. That’s how I work magic and if you’re not so stupid, maybe you can do a fraction of what _I_ do.”

“I said turn it off.”

“What’s the matter? It makes you sad to see someone stray from the herd?” Alichino tilts their head. “For someone who wants to be big and bad like big brother and big sister, you’re all marshmallows and feathers inside. What kind of criminal are you?”

Tops stands. He’s sick of sitting in the pile of stuffed animals anyways. What he wouldn’t give for a real chair and not the plush nonsense masquerading as normalcy in the playpen. “Big talk from someone who lives in the bastard version of Peewee’s Playhouse.”

Alichino is prepared for such an answer though. “It doesn’t mean I’m stupid though.” they say, “I know what I look like when I look in the mirror. What about you, crow?”

“I don’t give a shit about mirrors.” Tops scans the playpen for something easier to sit in but there’s nothing. Not even oversized dollhouse furniture. Just his miserable luck.

“I can tell. You dress like a Midge doll.” Alichino hovers down to the soft floor and orbits around Tops. They maintain their distance but keep moving, making no sound and staring at Tops with their wide, saucer-like eyes. “So, why do you specifically want to learn magic? Where’s this all leading to? Where’s the mini-boss? Where’s the battle?”

“The fuck are you talking about?” Tops constantly turns so he doesn’t lose track of the little hovering bastard. “I’m doing this so your annoying brother doesn’t put a bullet in my brain.”

“So why deal drugs in the first place?”

Tops straightens his shoulders with a smirk. “I provide a service. It’s not my fault the legionnaires are dicks about it.”

“What’s the money for?”

Tops has no quick answer; no sarcastic quip or elusive dismissal that would shake off Alichino’s line of questioning. No one’s ever asked him that question, not that Tops has invited the question. Even Prospect and Niklas are a little more concerned with their own ‘business enterprises’ for the question to even come up. It’s completely understandable though. In their line of work, asking those kinds of questions get you more entangled in someone’s personal life. That’s the exact opposite of what thugs, cookers, and dealers should be dealing with when they’re trying to stay one step ahead of the legionnaire bastards.

Alichino is staring at him though, so he has to think of a quick answer.

“For me.” Tops says because it makes the most sense. In fact, he likes the sounds of that so much that he adds, “For clothes, boots, booze…anything I want.” _Everything I fucking deserve._

“Your clothes are old and your drinks are cheap.” Alichino says in a sing-song voice, “Liar, liar, pants on fire, hanging from a telephone wire--”

“Shut up!” Tops snarls, “I don’t need to or have to tell you what it’s for! Just teach me to throw a fireball or something so I can leave!”

Alichino rolls their eyes. “It doesn’t work like that.” They hover back to the top of their lamb, perching yet again like a clownish gargoyle.

“Of course it does.” Tops says, “Mages throw fireballs like I’m sure you throw snowballs in the winter.”

Alichino tilts their head. “Who told you that? Your Grandma?”

Tops considers who _had_ told him that and nods. “She was old enough to be.” He admits.

“I guess you’re stupid enough to confuse human movies with what we do. It’s wishful thinking really, but no.” They fold their arms. “It’s just not… _realistic_.”

Tops looks around the playpen and frowns. “And _this_ nonsense is?” He asks, gesturing to the toys around him.

“Our magic works a certain way. It’s not like British magic or Chinese magic or even African magic.” Alichino continues, “Our magic pulls on sources, conjurers what we can. You can’t have fireballs without setting a fire. You can’t have lightning without electricity. You can’t have water without it being wet. You can’t have gales without turbulent air.” They point at Tops. “And you can’t have shapeshifting without skins. So, how many animals did you kill?”

Tops doesn’t answer the fae. Part of him still can’t believe this smug little bastard is supposed to be his teacher. It’s downright absurd.

“Lowly-born fae like you only have one skin all your life.” Alichino adds, “Take that off and you’re good as dead, or human. How’d you figure out the secret?”

How _did_ Tops learn? Those days are hazy even for his memories. He tries to imagine the first time he learned how to absorb the magic from another fae’s skin, but Tops can only hear screams in his ears and feel the wetness of sludgy, swamp water. He can hardly breathe for the stench of tear gas and the thick smoke of burning homes.

“I learned by example.” He says.

Alichino rubs their chin. “What others do you have?”

“Mouse and snake.”

“That’s it?”

 _As much as I could bear._ “For now.” Tops shrugs. “Never know what might come up.”

“And no water skins?”

Tops shudders. “Absolutely fucking not.”

“Hooeee!” Alichino rubs their hands together with a wide grin, “You’re going to be a lot more fun than I thought. Okay.” They raise their fingers and a book flies to their hand. “Let’s get this started right.”

Alichino tosses the book at Tops (which he haphazardly catches). It’s a paperback with a curled yellow cover and uneven letters, priced at a dollar. It looks like the sort of thing you’d find in the back of a pharmacy along with a bunch of Chicken Soup for the Soul books and healing through prayer. The cover is simple: _The Complete Edition of the 6 th and 7th Books of Moses, or Moses’ Magical Spirit-Art. _It looks nothing like a proper spell book.

“Please tell me you didn’t buy this from a CVS.” Tops grunts.

“No, but pretty close.” Alichino says, “This is Hoodoo 101. Every conjurer uses it as a basis.”

“But this is a human book,” Tops insists, “for their human Bible.”

“Yeah, its total nonsense to us, but here’s a fun fact: magic doesn’t care.” Alichino says, “From the perspective of magic, all names are equal to other names. Even our god SARAF’s name is just an abbreviation of all the names of every god that does and doesn’t exist.”

Tops sits back down. If he’s going to learn, he’ll at least be reasonably comfortable. He organizes a pile of Beanie Babies and Barbies, stretching his long thin legs. “All this theology is making my head hurt.” he says, “So reading this will make me a mage?”

“Wrong again!” Alichino tumbles theatrically to the ground like a proper clown. They sit right between the legs of the stuffed lamb puppet. “A ‘mage’ is anyone who uses magic. Users of our kind of magic are called ‘conjurers’. That’s _our_ word. Conjurers or hoodoo men. Like SARAF we have many names.” They grin. “Ain’t it grand?”

“Why not ‘voodoo men’?” Tops is more familiar with that word, at least from books and movies.

“Oh no. Not _that_.” Alichino scowls. “Voodoo is different. It pulls on a different source. Different names and words. Hoodoo is like an immigrant from older worlds.”

“Its very ‘American’ is what you mean.”

“Maybe.” Alichino pauses and then nods, “Yes.” Then the pierrot grins. “Now let’s do something cool.”

Tops has no idea what ‘cool’ possibly means but he has the vague feeling that he’s not going to enjoy it. He holds tightly onto the book and questions what in the hell Alichino has planned because they look unreasonably excited for what’s going to happen next.

“I want you to look into the distance,” Alichino says, “not at anything in particular but just ahead of you. To the point where you can’t see much of anything anymore.”

Tops wonders what the hell is the point of this exercise but he does so anyway. He stares ahead into the darkness of the playpen. The wall screens flicker, returning to empty static and finally darkness. Even the hellish red lights dim away and are replaced by a cool blue.

“Hoodoo can’t be learned in a book. No schools, no homework, no teachers. It’s all words and words are all we need for good hoodoo. You gotta hear the words just like the angels and demons hear the words of what remains of SARAF.

“You know the beginning, don’t you?

“In the beginning, there was just SARAF wrapped around reality’s tree-trunk, a snake eating its own tail. SARAF exists in silence but it spoke the first WORD and cut themselves in twain, fracturing into time and space. And out of time came 444 angels and out of space came 444 demons in eternal balance. And from those 888 beings came the fae and from the blood on the bark of the reality tree came the souls that would be humanity.

“And although split SARAF was and is not dead nor alive but eternal and dreaming out of SARAF dreaming comes magic.” 

The air shudders around Tops again. It’s a sensation he knows well—the movement of the air before a thunderstorm or a great gust of wind. It pulsates and everything feels warm and electric. He’s still staring into the distance but everything seems darker and the piles of toys in the corner of his eyes appear blurred. Even Alichino is barely a blip on his radar as he listens to the voice.

“Feel the magic all around you. The energy of creation and all things living and unloving in infinite names and forms. Hear the names of all the conjure-kings past, present, and future whispering to you. John. Solomon. Moses...”

The magic is pulsating around Tops, woven tightly around his body. It's crooning to him, even though all he’s doing is just sitting on the floor and staring into the distance. Even though Tops isn’t moving, it feels like he’s floating on a cloud of electric warmth. With every breath, the world vibrates around him and magic matches its rhythm. 

Then Tops isn’t in the playroom.

He is standing at a creek, watching the water move quickly southward where sharp rocks mark where the creek joins the rest of the river. He is a seven-year-old boy in a shirt that’s been handed down and sewn for his size and short pants cut from another handed down shirt. He is barefoot, squatting by the creek. He’s poking holes in the muddy earth, looking for something to crawl up.

“Topper, ya ain’t helpin’ one bit!” A girl with pigtails and horns stands in the middle of a water. Like Tops, she wears a hand-me-down clothes restitched to fit her. 

Tops wonders what the hell he’s doing here. He had been doing…something earlier. Something important that didn’t involve being _here._ He can’t even remember the name of this girl, with her pug-like nose and ragged pigtails. “What we doin’?”

“Lookin’ for frogs!” The girl digs in her dress pocket, pulling out a small warty toad. “We went and a found this one so far but he’s a young’un.” She shakes her head. “I afeared this. It's chancy we get a good frog ‘fore the fair.”

Mention of the fair clears up a lot of fog for Tops. The Midsummer Fair, and with it comes visiting family from Ohio and Virginia, cider brought out from the springhouses, maypole dances, plenty of sugar tree candy, and daily frog races. It would be the last bit of fun the children would have before they’d have to help their parents and siblings pack for the big move to Kentucky and Alabama.

“Why we lookin’ for frogs? We ain’t never gonna win that race...” Tops mutters.

“Not with that attitude we ain’t!” The girl rests her hands on her hips. “Ya just plum ready t’give up just cause it hard! Well, lotsa things in life are hard, Topper! We just gotta work at it a bit, y’know!”

Tops shrugs, not quite understanding why he’s being bothered n the first place.

“Oh, lookie at Mary Ellen an’ her boyfriend hangin’ out!” A boy walks into the area, followed by two other children. They’re the same height and size as Tops, equally barefoot but their clothes aren’t hand-me-downs and their hair are combed are far better.

Immediately Tops knows them and the bile rises in his throat: Tommy and his two goons Lester and Bailie.

“Ya leave us alone, Tommy!” Mary Ellen shrieks. She digs her pocket, pulling out a stone. “I got half a mind to thump ya good after ya went an’ got me in trouble with teacher yesterday!”

“Ha! Ya ain’t even _got_ half a mind, girl.” snickers Bailie.

“Not half a mind ‘tween the both of them.” Lester adds, “Just Mary Ellen an’ her li’l spaz.”

Tops has no interest in what Tommy says or does. He just wants a rise out of him, but Mary Ellen is the only one he manages to rile up. Within minutes the children are in the creek fighting with mud and rocks while Tops sits on the edge, forgotten in the moment. Eventually, the children take their fighting downstream, heading toward the outermost ring of the commune.

Only Tops is left behind. He considers following Mary Ellen if only because she acknowledges his presence, but he has nothing to offer for a confrontation between her and Tommy’s goons. Instead, he wades into the water. He’s been told time and time again to avoid going into the water while alone—not just because of the local animals but his size as well. Out of his seven siblings, Tops is the youngest and smallest.  

That doesn’t stop him though. Tops sloshes southward, walking bowlegged as he looks for frogs in the dark water. The rocks come closer into sight but there are still no sign of frogs.

It only takes two more steps before Tops slips.

The water pulls him under, dragging him further south. Tops gasps, kicking and yelling against the strong undercurrent. He paddles toward the muddy edge and in the water, he blindly reaches out. His small fingers wrap around— _something_ —and he pulls himself along it. Whatever it is, it is long and strong enough to support Tops’ weight.

The boy pulls himself along it and finally digs his fingers into the muddy bank. He surfaces from the water, lungs burning as he gulps air. He climbs onto the bank, still clutching onto the very thing that saved his life.

Tops looks to his left hand, still wet and muddied. His fingers are wrapped around a long root, whose body has torn off from a tree. Tops isn’t sure which tree, but his mind isn’t focusing on that right now. He soughs up more water and rests on the root to stand. He stumbles through the grass, putting as much distance between him and the creek as possible. He needs a change of clothes, which means heading for home. 

The commune is a concentric circle with layers of different homes spreading outward. In the center is the marketplace and maypoles, which have been swept clean and are being prepped for the Midsummer Fair. Then there are the less permanent houses—motorhomes, RVs, buses, and caravans for the traders and visitors. Outside of that are the circles of sodhouses and more permanent residences.

Tops isn’t sure where to go to _but_ home. He crosses the path of other adults bustling on their way to or from work, heading directly for the sodhouse at the edge of the commune circle. Squatting outside on the steps is a lean girl with long auburn hair full of messy braids and bright green eyes.  They have a cigarette in their mouth, puffing out smoke rebelliously. She’s approaching puberty, already marked by the acne popping up on her face. Her face is marked just like their mother’s, with black markings on the nose and eyes.

Tops knows this girl well: his eldest sister, Sabine.

“Topper?” Sabine squints at him. “What happened? Ya all wet!”

“Mom doesn’t want ya to smoke in the house.” Tops offers.

“I ain’t in the _house!_ ” Sabine growls. She stomps over to Tops, looking him up and down. “Did Tommy push ya in the water?”

“I was lookin’ for frogs…”

The girl growls and puts out her cigarette. She grabs Tops by the arm and drags him inside of the sodhouse. The sodhouse is empty, save for the spiders hanging the ceiling corners. She brings him to the firepit in the center of the house. The girl quickly goes to work, placing wood down on the cold pile of ashes.

“Ya can’t let that peckerwood Tommy bully ya like this.” Sabine grabs a match from the kitchen cabinet and lights it. “Take off ya clothes. Ya’ll catch a cold if ya stay that way.”

Tops fumbles out of his clothes. They’re already sticking to him from the wetness. “Ain’t ya s’posed to be at Old Neldor’s?”

“No!” Tops frowns and she grumbles, “Yeah, but so what? All he’s teachin’ me is stupid ‘rithmetic. I don’t need to learn it. Its dumb an’ borin’.” The girl tosses the match on the wood and jabs the starting fire with a poker. “I don’t see why Ma makes me go. He _knows_ I hate it.”

Tops doesn’t care for Old Neldor either. The skunk fae’s a stodgy stickler who talks about nothing but numbers and probabilities all day. Still, he’s one of the smartest fae in the commune, next to their Ma of course.

“Ma wants ya t’be smart.” Tops says.

“Ma don’t know _everythin’_!” Sabine pins Tops’ wet clothes to the wire hanging about the fire pit. “Ma thinks he’s so smart just ‘cause he knows scriptures an’ the mayor always a-callin’ on him for his fancy words. It don’t make no _sense_!” She huffs, “Ma gets to jaw on with mayors an’ councilors an’ them an’ I gotta learn ‘bout them dumb numbers!”

“I wanna learn the numbers.” Tops mumbles.

Sabine looks to her brother and sighs, shaking her long hair. “Aw, Tops, ya a young’un. I reckon ya don’t know the first thing about what ya plan on doin’. Ya ain’t old like I is. Already, clocks are tickin’ down for me to take ‘prenticeships like what Remliel and Micha be doin’ southwise.”

Tops has only heard about his elder siblings Remliel and Micha from Sabine. By the time Tops was old enough to crawl around, they had already set out in their own apprenticeships in a Georgian trading outpost. Only their snake mother sees them from time to time.

“Ya ain’t gonna go far, is ya?” Tops asks.

Sabine shrugs. “I ain’t aimin’ to take no peckerwood ‘prenticeships round here, that’s for sure. All I know is that I plan on bein’ plum rich; richer than commune mayors an’ all the fellers above ‘em too.”

“I wanna be rich too.” Tops huffs.

“Ah, ya ain’t even got pants on. How ya s’posed to be rich runnin’ around naked?” Sabine then frowns. “Topper, what’s that ya got in ya hand?”

Tops looks to his left hand. He’s still holding the root that kept him from being swept into the creek’s undertow and bashed on the rocks. It’s as long as Tops, dragging on the packed tight dirt floor of the sodhouse. With everything else going on, Tops had forgotten he had been holding it too.

“It went an’ saved me from the undertow.” Tops says.

Sabine frowns and scratches her chin. “How ya be carryin’ that? It as big as you.”

“It ain’t none heavy.” Tops studies the root. He knows from farming that most roots are covered in dirt and knobby but this one is just long and smooth, perhaps from being in nothing but water all its life. “It ain’t nothing like a beetroot.” He tilts his head, “Perhaps its holler?”

Sabine shakes her head. “You best get rid of it. Ma and Mom says ya ain’t s’posed to be bringin’ no things from the woods home. Who knows what critters be livin’ in it, if it indeed holler?” 

“But what if it’s good? It kept me from drowning!” Tops insists, “S’posin’ it’s the good sort of thing from the woods, like what would keep the haints away an’ discomfitin’ the hexes other fellers lay on us? It’d be plum crazy to toss it back!”

Sabine, being the most stubborn of all the children in the family, would likely keep arguing until sunset had the door not opened. Their mother steps through the door, wearing his typical shirt and jeans with a shotgun slung over his shoulder. His hair is as wild and tangled as Sabine’s but dark as midnight.

Immediately the adult fae’s eyes settle on Sabine. “Sabine, what are you doing here?” Then he notices Tops, “And Topper, where are your _pants_?”

“Tops went an’ nearly drowned in the creek an’ I won’t have him catch a cold, Ma!” Sabine insists.

“You would catch my hand for all the trouble you get into, Sabine.” Their mother stalks over to the fire pit, setting down his school bag. He shakes his head, tosses his long hair. “For a smart girl like you to be spending all your time running in the streets instead of learning math with Neldor like you’re supposed to--”

Sabine folds her arms and sticks out her bottom lip. “Neldor ain’t know as much as ya think Ma! An’ anyway, numberly tack is borin’! I oughta be learnin’ scriptures like ya! Learnin’ what words say right quick an’ what thinkin’ on what picters really mean an’ what critters been where!”

“I don’t pay Neldor for you to just lay out of school when you _feel_ like it, Sabine.” Their mother sighs. He removes the shotgun from his shoulder, looking to Tops. “Topper, hold my gun for a minute.”

Tops takes the gun without protest and watches his mother move through the house. Tops has always thought their raccoon mother to be strange even among the fae—moving silently, speaking elegantly, and always carrying himself high. Tommy and his gang say that Tops’ mothers are uppity city folk and they only came to the mountains because other fae wouldn’t tolerate them. Tops is sure the only reason Tommy hates his mother is because he’s the only teacher in the commune and Tommy always fails the spelling and reading tests.

“Ma, what when Mom comin’ back?” Tops asks but his mother is too preoccupied arguing with Sabine. Their voices echo through the sodhouse, escalating until his mother physically tosses Sabine out the door.

“And don’t come back until you’ve learned your algebra! I’m quizzing you later!” Their mother shouts out the door before shutting it. He exhales, shouldering slumping. “That girl will be the death of me…” He rubs his forehead, moving hair out his face. He turns around and catches sight of Tops, “Topper, you’re still _here_?”

“I don’t have no clothes an’ you told me I’m too old to runabout naked.” Tops answers.

His mother sighs and shakes his head. “True enough,” he admits, “and it’s ‘don’t have’. What you said is a double negative.”

“That means its extra.” Tops insists.

His mother doesn’t argue, having his fill of debating children for the day. He goes into the back room where all the winter blanket and extra clothes are folded into wicker baskets and uncovers a plaid shirt and rough pants for Tops. They’re a size too small but Tops can tolerate them for the day.

“That’s it, unless you want to wear Sybil’s dresses.” His mother says, “I think she’s still small enough for you to fit in them.”

Tops shakes his head. Sybil barely tolerates having to share her toys. Clothes are a different matter. The little girl would smile in Ma’s face but always pinch and poke Tops once Ma was out of earshot.

Tops changes but keeps the root nearby. His mother glowers at it. “What do you have there, Topper?”

“It saved my life.” Tops grasps the root, holding it up to his mother, “I fell in the creek an’ I grabbed it. It came with me ‘cause it’s good luck.”

His mother continues staring at it. His eyebrows knot together and he reaches out cautiously. He touches it briefly and yanks his hand back as if touching fire.

“How could I not notice it earlier?” his mother mumbles. Then he shakes his head. “It gives me a bad feeling. Toss it away.” Tops tries to protest but his mother shakes his head, “No, Topper, toss it away. If you want a stick, I’ll get you one at the fair. That one’s not something you want hanging around the house.”

Unlike Sabine, Tops doesn’t have her stubbornness to hold a real argument. His mother shoos Tops out the sodhouse and back out in the commune streets. With a heavy heart, Tops walks off in direction of the creek. It’s not like he has anything else to do to procrastinate his mother’s command. He fidgets and fusses too much for proper schooling and he’s too young to take an apprentice like Sabine or most of his siblings. He’s left floating around the commune like Old Owl (who was so old that all their teeth had fallen out their head) or simple Carson (who just wanted to fix and wash cars all day and sleep under the stars).

Tops wonders if he’ll ever be as old as Naomi, or if he’s just simple like Carson. His raccoon mother insists that Tops isn’t simple, just ‘different’ in his way of thinking. Tops isn’t sure if that’s true or just a mother’s kindness. Tops ponders this until he returns to the creek. There’s no one around, not even Mary Ellen looking for frogs or Tommy and his goons getting rocks to throw at squirrels. Tops stands at the creek edge, making certain this time not to wade too far in.

Tops tosses the root away. He takes three steps before something hits him in the back of the head. He falls with a yelp and looks besides him.

The root rests on the grass as if he’d never thrown it away in the first place.

Tops growls and tries tossing it away again.

Again.

And again.

On the fifth try, Tops is more than determined to lob it halfway across the mountains when he sees a shadow move between the tree.

A shadow far too big to be a deer.

Tops goes still as a stone. It could have been a trick of the light but he sees it. A shape on two legs stalking through the trees. Tops heart starts pounding and he hopes it’s just a mistake, but a gust of wind brings a sour stench with it.

Tear gas.

Tops bolts from the creek. He runs between the trees, still holding the root and still moving haggardly through the grass. He runs quickly but his legs are short and he’s only seven years old. There’s no way he’ll make it to the siren at the center of the commune. His only option is to use his voice and hope someone listens.  

“Men!” Tops breaks through the beaten grass that marks the outer ring of the commune. He screams as loudly as he can, _“They comin’! Men is comin’!”_

Teenagers and adults are talking or heading back to work. Their heads turn as they look at Tops, running toward the small crowds of those lingering around the village. Tops recognizes two of the adults as being part of the commune council and the remaining one being the mayor’s aid.

“Men? In the woods?” mutters one adult.

“What he saying?” asks another.

“Say, ain’t that Jafaris’ young’un?”

“Men is comin’! I seen them!” Tops points in direction of the creek, “They got tear gas! I smelt it!”

The mayor’s aid looks to the men. “Three of ya come with me. We need t’see what’s going on.”

“What if he just seein’ things?” asks a teen.

“Yeah, legionnaires don’t come to these mountains.” Adds a woman.

“There’s a first time for everything.” The mayor’s aid looks at Tops, “Topper, go to the safe zones an’ round up anyone else!”

“But what about Ma and Sabine?” Tops asks.

There’s a cry from the edge of the village. A thick mist is pouring between the trees, moving quickly toward the village. Adrenaline pours into Tops’ small body and he bolts, running as quickly as he can. He weaves between the dirt roads of the inner commune, trying to put as much distance between himself and the gas.

Guns go off and Tops doesn’t know if it’s the commune-folk or the intruders. He doesn’t look behind him. He knows from the drills that looking behind them only wastes time. He should head immediately for the safety zones but he doesn’t. Instead, he curves eastward where he knows Old Neldor’s motorhome is.

“Topper?” Sabine calls. The girl had been walking on her way to her lessons but was dragging her feet.

Tops runs toward her sister. “Sabine! Men is comin’!”

“I _know_ that!” Sabine snaps. She grabs his hand, dragging him away. “Is ya simple? Ya should be in the safe zone!”

“I-I had to get ya…” Tops stammers.

“Fuckin’ idiot!” Sabine growls. She grabs Tops, tugging him along. “Come on already!”

Sabine pulls him along, moving across the commune. Engines roar and motorbikes race through the commune. Their riders don’t wear legionnaire uniforms but patched leather jackets stitched with gang symbols and colors. They fire guns at adults and snatch anyone that’s small enough to grab—be it man, woman, or child. The lowlies that put up more of a fight are rewarded with knives in their throats or stomachs. One of the bikers has already set upon a man, skinning him with a sharp knife. Even when they flee from the sight, Tops is unsure if he’ll ever dream of anything else ever again.

They keep running, with hearts pounding and legs nearly numb. They jump over bodies and avoid the thicker clouds of gas as other motorbikes pour in from another section of the commune. The two keep running until they arrive at the small cliff that marks the safe zone. At the bottom is a mucky swamp, whose sides are marked by thick brambles.

Sabine shoves Tops toward the cliff. “Go hide!”

Tops grabs his sister’s hand before she can turn and run. “What ‘bout ya?”

“I gotta go get the others!” Sabine says, “Hester an’ Sybil is still at the schoolhouse!”

“Then I’m comin’ with!” Tops insists, “I’m big enough!”

“No, ya _ain’t_!” 

And Sabine, with all her twelve-year-old strength, shoves him away. Tops stumbles and his foot slips on the wet grass of the cliff. He falls back, plummeting through the air and into the swamp. For any foreign child, such a fall would be death, but for a lowly like Tops, it’s a minor inconvenience. He swims through the dark water and surfaces. He calls his sister’s name.

Instead, he hears Sabine scream and then the rumble of a motorbike engine.

Tops calls for Sabine. There is no response. Engines roar and people scream. Smoke fills the air, burning the plastic and plywood of motorhomes and sodhouses.

Tops swims toward the cliff’s side, thick with rocks and hanging grasses. His hands are small and slippery but he climbs out of the swamp water. He slides into the hole hidden in the cliff, known only to the lowly children it was meant to hide. The hole had been dug out years ago and the earth tightly packed to keep it secure. There are blankets pushed into the corner, encrusted with dry mud from previous drills and a stash of jarred preserves.

Tops has no one here. He only has the root, which has tangled in his hair through the mud. Even the swamp and Sabine couldn’t separate them. Tops crawls onto the muddied blankets and sobs. He coughs the remaining tear gas out his lungs and repeats his sister’s name.   

No one comes. Not more children and not adults either. Hours pass and the daylight bleeds from the sky. Tops crawls to the hole’s entrance. The forest is dark and the swamp water reflects the moon high above. Any _smart_ child would wait for an adult to come…but Tops isn’t smart. Instead, he thinks of Sabine.

He thinks of Sabine.

Still holding the root, he pulls on his crow skin. He leaves behind the shape of a frightened boy and became a trembling crow chick. His feathers are molting but he can still fly, albeit clumsily. He hops out of the cave entrance, riding the air above the muddy water, the brambles, and hitting the grass. He looks up the cliff and sees the glow of fire high above him. The air still stinks of tear gas, blood, and gods know what else. Tops inhales shallowly in the hopes he doesn’t choke and take to the air again. He flies up high and lands on the grass of the commune.

Fires are spreading through the commune and fae are scattered. Some are working to douse the embers or at least save the fields that remain. Others are wailing, calling out the names of those lost. For the first time, Tops sees the bodies of fae either crushed under the wheels of motorbikes or skinned and dying.

He sees Old Neldor lying in a drainage ditch. He’s still breathing but his skin is nearly hanging off his body. His raccoon mother is next to him, hands digging into the flesh. The old fae’s skin is transfigured—moving between tawny skin and skunk fur. Even Old Neldor’s face is warping, moving between a skunk’s muzzle and his own wrinkled face. Tops lands on the ground but his raccoon mother doesn’t notice him.

“I’m sorry…” Old Neldor burbles, blood running from the corners of his mouth. In his gnarled hand, he holds a scrap of old cloth. “I’m s-sorry, Jafaris…I saw them take her. I tried to grab her but they took her…then they got me…”

“Save your breath.” Tops’s raccoon mother whispers, “If we can get you to a healer--”

“I’m sorry…so sorry...” Old Neldor’s body rattles and he coughs and sputters one last time before going still.

His raccoon mother removes his hands and the skin comes with it. It sticks to his mother’s hands, bloody and hanging until it becomes a skunk pelt. His mother sharply inhales and shakes it off, casting it aside.

Then Tops’ mother stands and stumbles away. Perhaps he’s looking for Sabine. Perhaps he’s going to find a place to bury Old Neldor. Either way, Tops is forgotten and alone with the corpse of Old Neldor and the flesh wrongfully ripped from him.

Tops becomes a boy once more. He stares at the bloody pelt, smelling the smoky air and hearing the weeping in the air. His fingers are wrapped around the rough root, which is still in his hand even though he’s changed his skin. Without thinking, his fingers seize around the fae’s skin. He holds it to his chest and inhales it.

It smells of Sabine. So does the scrap of cloth clasped in Old Neldor’s fingers. So Tops holds onto them both and marches through the burning commune in the shadows of his ruined home.

 

* * *

 

Tops is sobbing on the playroom floor. Even when he realizes what he’s doing, he can’t stop crying. He wipes his eyes but the tears won’t stop flowing. He looks up and Alichino is hovering over him.

“You done freaking out yet?” Alichino asks.

“W-what the hell?” Tops gasps through his tears. “What the fuck was that? What’s going on?”

“You tell me.” Alichino folds their legs under them, still floating. “One moment you were all Buddha under the bodhi tree, the next minute you’re thrashing and crying like you got ants in your shorts.”

Tops doesn’t know what’s going on either. He tries to stand, but his legs are weak and shaking. He leans on his staff to get up. “F-fuck this!” he stammers, “Fuck all of this. I don’t need it.”

“I thought you said you had to learn?” Alichino says.

“Fuck learning! I don’t need this shit!” Tops stumbles away, kicking toys out of his path. “I don’t need this shit. I was fine before. I-I’ll keep being _fine_.”

“I seriously doubt that considering how ‘far’ you’ve gotten in life.” Alichino says, “And you can’t just leave this place. Magic is about intent, remember?”

“Then let me out of here!” Tops screams.

“Listen, dummy.” Alichino points to the staff, “You got a lot of talent but being stupid isn’t the only thing holding you back. There’s no learning without sacrifice.”

“Fuck you!” Tops yells, “Fuck you and all your _nonsense! I want out!_ ”

And Tops stomps forward, ready to attack Alichino unless he shows him the way out. One step ahead and the world breaks apart, dissolves into darkness. The air tears apart like paper and when Tops’ foot comes down, it’s on the cracked pavement.

He’s outside. The sun has set over the distant buildings and the nighttime noise of insects and cars has settled over the city. In front of tops is Wickerson Paper, still standing and ugly although there are lights inside. Rock music plays on a static-filled boombox and a dumpster has been pulled up in front of it. Airplane gremlins are smoking and chatting outside, taking breaks in hauling out garbage and hauling in furniture.

The old paper mill has never been livelier.

Tops’ brain is screaming a hundred questions-- _How did it get here? Why is he here? Is this another trick?_ —but he shoves them away for what’s most important. He walks up to two gremlins, still leaning on his staff. The gremlins are sitting on a broken couch, sharing whiskey and smoking in the open air.

“You!” Tops says, “What’s going on here?”

A gremlin looks him up and down and then continues smoking. He looks to his companion, “Look who showed up.”

“The boss’ new ‘plaything’.” The companion adds.

“Don’t ignore me!” Tops thumps his staff into the ground an electric pulsate shudders from it. The gremlins sit up, looking between Tops and the staff. Tops trembles but forces himself to remain standing. “This is my home. What are you fuckfaces doing here?”

The smoking gremlin shrugs. “Just doing what the boss wants.”

“This is bullshit!” Tops yells, “Who’s in charge around here?”

“Hey!” Tops looks up and sees Prospect hanging out the second-floor window. The gremlin waves to him, “Long time no see, flat-ass.”

Tops curses and decides to cut out the middleman. He pulls his crow skin on and flies to the window. He climbs onto the ledge and hops onto the floor.

Floodlights are positioned throughout the abandoned paper mill, hooked up to generators. Over the churning sound of motors, teams of gremlins are working. The bottom floor is being swept and scrubbed while cubicles are being assembled in different corners. Backpacks and duffel bags are piled, already marking off areas for future squatting. The second floor is also being scrubbed and swept of excrement and dust, tingeing the air with a clean, nostril-burning bleach scent.

“What are you doing here?” Prospect asks.

“I was getting ready to ask you the same.” Tops sheds his crow skin and nearly falls over. He leans on the rusty railing of the second floor, breathing heavily. When did he get so weak? “What’s with all the construction?”

Prospect shrugs. “You tell me. One moment I’m throwing back a cold one with the boys and I get an order from Virgil to start making this place ready for production. The zombie room’s stinking up the place and we could use another whorehouse. Not a bad idea for this dump but it's going to take a _lot_ of work.” He wrinkles his nose. “Place smells like every animal in the state took a dump here.”

“It's not _that_ bad...” Of course, five years is a long enough time to go nose blind to such a place.

“You kidding me? The stench in here could take the paint off the walls! Hell, it already has.” Prospect nods to the rusting metal and the paint that’s long since fallen or been scraped off by those in the quest for metal piping. “Wait, how do you know this place?” Tops wavers and Prospect’s eyes widen. “Did you… _live_ here?”

Tops clenches his teeth. “None of your business.”

“Holy shit, you _did_! Damn, son! I knew lowlies had low standards but I didn’t think it would be _this_ low.” Prospect turns his head, shouting down the walkway. “Hey, Niklas! You won’t believe this!”

Doors swing open and Niklas walks out. He’s in painters overalls and gloves stained with questionable fluids and smells vaguely like rotten eggs. At the sight of the grey fae, Tops backs inches ever closer to the window. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d have to make an emergency escape from an awkward situation that involved plummeting out a window.

“What now?” Niklas grunts, “I’m in the middle of getting your oafs to put down my stuff. I bet they’ve broken half my things now.”

Prospect rolls his eyes. “Oh please. You’ve just sitting on your ass all day.”

Niklas smirks. “And getting paid. What about it?”

Prospect laughs. “I hear that man!”

Niklas then notices Tops and scowls. “What the rat doing here? I thought he was taking a swimming trip with cement shoes.”

Tops folds his arms but remains close to the window. “You have no right to call me ‘rat’.”

“If the shoe fits.” There’s a crashing behind Niklas and the little gray man curses. He runs back into the room, “Hey, morons, careful with that! That’s delicate equipment, not bottles of beer!”

Tops moves past Prospect, following Niklas. “You better not be touching my things!”

The office/Tops’ bedroom is in total disarray. His bags have already been rifled through and anything of interest has already been removed. The sleeping bag has been pushed into the corner, making room for metal tables, coffee pots, and a bevy of other chemical paraphernalia Niklas uses. Gremlins are still moving things in and out, reshaping the room to the whims of Niklas and (by a greater extension) Virgil.

Tops spies a gremlin attempting to move his broken computer chair. “Hey! Put that down!” he orders.

“No, dump it!” Niklas points to the garbage bin outside the door.

“I _said_ put it down!” Tops orders, “It’s broken enough as is! I don’t need you moving it around!”

“It’s a piece of trash!” Niklas argues, “Who would want that?”

“It’s my trash and I’ll do as I fucking want with it!” Tops yells.

The gremlin throws the chair down with a _crack_ and throws up his hands. “I’m going on break.” He announces and leaves the room. The moment he leaves, the chair falls over, unable to maintain its broken balance any longer.

Niklas growls and jumps up. Before Tops can move away, the grey fae seizes a fistful of his hair and yanks Tops down so they’re eye to eye. “Fuckface, I do not have _time_ for your nonsense!” Niklas says, “My new boss wants this place cleaned up and ready in a day and, unlike you, I _like_ making a good impression on someone who’ll shoot me if I _don’t_! So do us all a favor and kindly _fuck off!_ ”

Tops places his palm on Niklas’ large forehead and shoves him away. “Virgil can go fuck himself if he thinks I’m going to just let you waltz in here and do whatever you want!”

“Why the fuck do you even _care_?” Niklas demands, “There’s nothing but garbage here!” He kicks over a stack of books. “Unless you count the junk the homeless guy squatting here brought.”

“Hey! I don’t kick _your_ stuff!” Tops runs over, picking up the books. He may not have liked _all_ of them but at least he’s going to keep _some_ of them.

“No, but you throw it at my head.” Niklas grunts. He pauses. “Wait, what?”

“He used to _live_ here!” Prospect hovers in the doorway. His eyes are opened wide like he’s watching a soap opera unfold in front of him.

Niklas takes a few more seconds to process this news. Then he looks at Tops. He’s gone from irritated and scowling to completely confused. “Seriously? I thought you were joking earlier but… _really_? You lived _here_? I thought you had… _standards_.”

“Standards? You’re lecturing me about _standards?_ ” Tops shouts, “You’re a fucking drug dealer!”

“Yeah, but I got a _real_ roof over my head with a kitchen and a TV with cable…” Niklas isn’t even yelling anymore. He looks around the destroyed office and the anger continues to evaporate. “You even got plumbing in this place?” He takes a whiff of the air and shakes his head, “No, of course not. How…long have you been _living_ like this?”

“F-fuck you,” Tops says and hates that his body chooses _now_ as the time to stutter.

“Oh great. Another ‘Fuck you’. You know, that’s your fucking response to everything.” Niklas folds his arms, “First, you betray me to your new drug lord pal and now you’re telling me to drop dead because I found out that you’ve been living like a sewer rat. If I was a different kind of fae, I’d have called the legionnaires to send you to a grindhouse a long time ago, Topper.”

Tops is trembling again. His heart is pounding faster than he thinks he can handle. He leans against the broken chair because he thinks he might collapse otherwise. “Tops. My name is fucking _Tops--”_

“Oh please!” Niklas yells, “We both know your name is fucking Topper, you lowly--”

_“Shut the fuck up!”_

Everything in the room rattles. The air vibrates, violently humming with electricity. The walls pulsate like they’re breathing. Niklas stumbles and Prospect shudders, clutching the doorway like a lifeline. Tops can hardly breathe. He’s holding his staff and it feels…warm under his fingers; warm like the angel’s corpse. Everything feels unreal, like he should be floating.

“It’s Tops. It's Tops. Not ‘Topper’. _Tops._ My name is fucking Tops Emere and I will be fucking _respected_!”

He points at Niklas with his staff. The feathers hanging on the end are moving without wind. The cheap plastic bells are chiming along, moving with the vibrating air.

“I was nothing but a pathetic fae to you. You think I don’t know how you talked about me? You and Crysta and all the other assholes you lived next to? I was always a joke! _Your fucking punchline!_ Well, that changes _right the fuck now!_ ”

He slams the staff into the floor. The room quakes, throbs with magic. Niklas is thrown to the ground and Prospect grasps a second hand onto the door frame. Tops breathes slowly and he _feels_ everything around him vibrate with magic. He can’t believe he’s lived this long without knowing it—without feeling the magic all around him like ripples in a pond.

“I’m no one’s joke. Not again.” Tops breathes, “This miserable place was only a stepping stone on the path of greatness I have carved for _myself_ and _myself alone_!”

Then Tops raises his staff in the air. The magic twists around him and every floodlight shines brightly and winks out. All around him the electricity swells and bursts violently, spattering sparks. Magic rushes through him and he feels every living thing around him breathe and swell with magic.

And then there’s a violent crack of lightning and he is gone.

 

* * *

 

For several minutes, Niklas and Prospect say nothing. They’re left in the darkness of the abandoned paper mill, unsure what in the fuck they just saw. Prospect, who is still grasping the doorway and trembling, has the only comment.

“Did…he just fucking _explode_?” the airplane gremlin mumbles.


	4. Older Roots

Unlike what Prospect thinks, Tops does not explode. He moves in the same way the fae move between the gateways that separate the colonies and the homestead. It is far more violent though, immediate and tumultuous in a way that no body should have to suffer in one go. But Tops tolerates it. He’s stretched and pulled and strained through the colors and clouds of space-time until he’s dropped off in elsewhere.

Its nothing compared to the burning in his stomach, the pitiful humiliation roiling inside of him.

He stumbles onto cold pavement. The first thing he does is vomit or try to. He spits bile onto the pavement and remembers he hasn’t eaten proper food—only the remaining soul energy of dead angels and the Powerbar he stole from Prospect that morning. (Oh, and all the alcohol at Niklas’s but that was pissed out long ago.) He felt like a god once he tapped into that magic—that beautiful rhapsody of just pure wonder and existence that all conjurers must feel—but now he just feels sick to his stomach.

He gags again. He tries to tap into the magic again but can’t. He’s too tired, from the stress or either from lack of food. Aggressive nausea overtakes him and he sits on the pavement, leaning on his staff. He hasn’t felt so rough and sick since the earlier days when he first set out from the commune. Now he’s not sure.

He looks around, trying to get his bearings on his location. The scenery is vaguely familiar. There’s a five-way intersection of streets and bent over signs hit by careless drivers of the past, a small strip of Chinese restaurants, barbers, and a hole-in-the-wall church. Old Victorian houses are packed closely together, remade into three family homes with dirt yards and lack of care. Bells of familiarity don’t start ringing in Tops’ head until he sees the park out the corner of his eye. He wanders toward it, walking across the basketball court and into a play area sparse with grass and mostly dirt. Set back from the road is the sad excuse for the playground section: a tetherball missing its ball and string (so, essentially, just a metal rod in the ground), the climber playset looks like it hasn’t been touched by a child in years, and the swing set only has two seats. There’s one bench for any adults interested in watching their children but not much else.

Kenson Park. An informal name as the park is on Kenson Street, but the original sign had been taken out by a drunk driver years ago.

Once he’s standing in the flat dirt of the miserable playground, the memories of living in the park flood back to Tops. It had been the perfect place: not too far away from safety but also close to civilization and all its necessities. The Chinese restaurant was open all hours of the night and the fae that pulled the occasional shift never asked too many questions. He landed his first deals at the barbershop, making exchanges with the guy who sold pirated VHS and CDs so he would have enough spare cash for the package store.  He camped between the outdoor playset’s tower and tube bridge. Of course, the human children couldn’t see him but they could _feel_ him.

None of the kids went near it while Tops lived there. They were convinced it was haunted. Sometimes Tops would hiss and shake the tube for fun, filling the kid’s imaginations with ghosts and other playground ghouls. It had been a cozy existence until a serious blizzard, where even fae had trouble sleeping it rough. After nearly freezing his fingers off, he decided he needed a place with walls. Open air wasn’t going to cut it in New England.

He was lucky to find his paper mill.

No, not ‘his’. It was never ‘his’. Tops couldn’t even claim the paper mill in the vague sense that the nixies claim their rivers or the tommyknockers with their caverns. All he has is intuition and his claws to keep him company.

So why does he feel so empty? The emptiness is different from hunger but is shaped like longing—like the longing in his raccoon mother’s eyes when he realized he would never have another argument with Sabine again. The emptiness of not having a stubborn daughter who might properly carry on the family name and lowly traditions.

It's not like Tops _cared_ about the paper mill. It was cold, drafty, lacked plumbing, and he couldn’t build a fire without the danger of setting something ablaze. The only thing it allowed for was some modicum of privacy and a safe place to store his contraband and drugs. He doesn’t have any love for the abandoned theater either. A few days amongst the Bridgewater Triangle and he doesn’t have a room. He sleeps in the open with all the other, replaceable hoodlums in the lobby, in the disgusting concession stand. He has to wait in line to take a shower and whine and steal energy bars so he’ll have _something_ in his stomach while opening gates.

He’s survived on less but it’s a downgrade, he can’t deny that. Everything Tops once owned, Virgil has sunk his claws into and raked it away.

The air shudders, concentrating like clouds before the rain. Tops’ head throbs but he breathes slow, taking in little sips. He turns his head, trying to find the source of the disturbance. His body swivels and he sees the source of the trouble standing right behind him.

A night doctor stands on the sidewalk that cuts across the playground and moves to rejoin the street. It's twitching with its spine (if it _does_ have a spine) bent at a rough angle and its limbs hugged close to its body, like a zombie suffering through even more extreme decay. Its sheet is ragged and stained with black, as if it had just torn itself from the jaws of death.

There is whispering on the wind and Tops isn’t sure if it’s the night doctor or just fear. He looks around but he only feels one disturbance and this rogue night doctor is at the center of it. He should be afraid. He should be terrified, wondering what in the hell a night doctor is doing wandering around. The legionnaires should be dealing with this— _they’re_ supposed to corral the undead and keep them from wandering about.

Instead, he’s furious.

“What do you want, huh?” Tops marches toward the night doctor, “You want revenge? You want to fucking _kill me_?”

The night doctor says nothing. It twitches, continues its low whispers.

“Do it! C’mon!” Tops thumps his chest, _“Just fucking do it already!”_

Tops moves in closer. The night doctor hisses and steps away. It stumbles over the ragged grass and there’s a loud _snap_ and the creature falls. It hits the grass but doesn’t stop moving. The hissing grows and it crawls on all fours like a chimp, moving close to a tree to put distance between Tops and itself.

Tops looks at the ground where the creature stumbled. At first, he thinks it dropped a hunk of driftwood but no--in the yellowed streetlights, he can see it’s a foot distorted by mummification. The foot has gone completely yellow-brown with age and what Tops thought was black bark must be mold or the remains of its skin.

The night doctor is still hissing, corner near the tree like a frightened animal. Tops remains where he is, observing the creature and thinking of the days back in the commune when he had gone hunting. They were so deep in the mountains that hunting was allowed within reason and his snake mother had always been eager for it. She taught her children all about the thrill of predation and the kill. Tops never took to it but his other siblings did.

“Where did you come from?” Tops asks.

The creature hisses, so Tops assumes this night doctor—whatever it truly is—can’t be more intelligent than a zombie. It also lacks the weaponry of the others, so it couldn’t be ‘attached’ to it in the same way Tops’ staff is. _Could it have just dropped out of the gate?_ he thinks. He studies the night doctor’s ragged robes and realizes most of the holes are gunpowder burns, likely from Prospect’s gun. Still, that wouldn’t explain what it's doing _here_. It also doesn’t explain the creature’s lack of glamour. Together, the night doctors had been a mass of terror. By itself, it looks pathetic.

“You’re an animal.” Tops states. It's not an insult, just the truth. Either this night doctor is damaged or all they know is the hunt and nothing else. It followed Tops ( _somehow_ ) but it has no follow-up plan.

Its then an idea develops in Tops’ mind. A really fucking stupid idea. He’s sure if Prospect was here, he’d be screaming at him for how stupid of an idea he just got.

He does it anyway, ‘cause fuck Prospect.

Tops takes two more steps towards the night doctor. The creature hisses but it sounds needling, like a frightened beast trying to scare aware a bigger predator. He looks into the night doctor’s shrouded face. Behind the moldy shroud stitched from gray and blue rags, he sees dark pools of undeath staring back him. The magic concentrated around Tops throbs and he realizes that this is no willing creature. Like any zombie, it’s a lost soul tethered to do the bidding of another.

Tops takes another step. He reaches out to the night doctor. The creature shudders but doesn’t run. It even moves forward slightly, like a needy dog.

The ground beneath Tops violently heaves. Tops only has a second to look down before he sees the cement sidewalk ripple like a wave. Then it surges, flinging him away. Tops flies through the air, slamming the side of the outdoor play set. The air leaves Tops’ lungs and he falls onto the wood mulch surrounding the area. He spits out tan wood fibers and looks up.

The sidewalk is still warping and undulating like waves. A tendril snakes out and grabs the lingering night doctor. The creature shrieks and screams but the tendril is unyielding. Another tendril slithers from the sidewalk and grabs the creature’s legs. With a violent twist followed by a _snap!_ and _pop!,_ the mummified flesh and bone of the night doctor are broken. The remnants of the ghoul are flung away, hitting the earth.

Smoke billows from the remains, filling the air with a rotten egg scent. Tops’ eyes water but he ignores the scent. He stumbles to his feet, holding his staff. He looks around but can’t see the source of the act.

“Wowee, yah really _are_ a blind sonuva gun, ain’t ya?”

The trees move in front of Tops and a figure leaps down, no longer obscured by the leaves. A woman lands on the ground, standing twenty feet away from Tops. Her clothes are simple; rolled up culottes and a threadbare jacket that looks like it's been handed down in her family for centuries. Tops thinks she has unkempt gray-brown hair, but then he sees it’s a rabbit skin face mask that’s been stapled to her russet brown flesh. The mask looks battered, as if haphazardly stitched together from hundreds of other rabbits.

The rabbit-skin woman curtsies. “I must say thanks to yah for findin’ the massa’s stray rag puppets.”

Tops stares at the woman. After a few seconds, he only has one question: “Oh, what is _this_ fresh hell?”

“I came t’offer yah something yah might want a piece of,” continues the rabbit-skin woman, “considerin’ yah didn’t go ‘long all peaceful-like with them night doctors.”

Tops glowers at the strange woman. “ _You’re_ the one that sent those ringwraith bastards after us?”

“Somethin’ like that.” The rabbit-skin woman raises a hand in the air and sweeps it across.

The sidewalk warps again. The cement spits out two tendrils, this time moving toward Tops. Tops doesn’t stay still long enough for them to reach. He pulls back on the crow skin, flying up into the air. He moves toward a tree branch, staying out of their reach.

The rabbit-skin woman snickers and brings up her other hand. A third tendril shoots out from the sidewalk under the tree. It cracks the branch but Tops leaps away. He circles the woman, who still remains on the dirt.

The rabbit-skin woman keeps watching him but doesn’t move. She keeps twisting and moving her hands, yanking up cement tentacles and trying to snatch him from the air. Finally, she stops her movements and folds her arms.

The rabbit-skin woman grins. “Just shapeshifting? Some conjurer yah is. Got no idea why Daddy Jack wants _yah_ in particular.”

Tops has a mental file dedicated to just the names of crime lords and who’s on their shit list. ‘Daddy Jack’ isn’t a name he recognizes on either side. Still, the woman likes to talk. He avoids landing near the basketball court and keeps to the large oak tree nearby.

“Your employer didn’t tell me he wanted something. He just sent the goons.” Tops says.

“Goons?” mutters the rabbit-skin woman, “Yah a cartoon or somethin’?”

“Do you have a _name?_ ” Tops growls. He’s not about to be questions about semantics by someone dressed as a demented March Hare.

“Brer Rabbit is what de folks call me.” The woman brings her hands to her sides. Before Tops can move, she raises them quickly in the air. “De conjurin’ rascal o’ de wildlands! Born an’ bred in de briar patch, an’ de smarter fae ‘round dese parts!”

The ground rumbles and small spikes shoot out from the sidewalk. Tops yelps, flying into the oak’s thick branches in the hopes of shielding himself. It barely works because cement is heavy and no match for leaves. He yelps, feathers and flesh pelted by the sharpened cement chunks.

Tops uses beak and claw to dig out a stone from his stone. Its already marked with his blood. “Love to talk, don’t you?” he growls.

He looks between the leaves. Brer Rabbit hasn’t moved from the spot. She’s watching him and her dark eyes shine in the streetlights, looking gleeful. Tops questions if she’s truly a rabbit fae, as they never look as shabby as her…or have fur stapled to their head.

Then she twists her hands again. Thick spikes shoot out of the sidewalk this tent, jolting the tree. This time, Tops is ready for it. He jumps ship before the impact, taking back to the air. He circles above her, wings spread out to maintain height. 

“For such a great conjurer, you got shit aim!” Tops yells from the sky, “Not even a Seelie peasant would take you!”

“Yah got a smart mouth for a damn trash bird!” Brer Rabbit’s face twists into a gleeful sneer. She swipes her hand, sending sidewalk spikes straight upward.

Tops swerves through the air. He avoiding most of the spikes, twisting through the air but he doesn’t have to somersault for long. Brer Rabbit is grinning until she realizes her mistake. The cement spikes that were once in the air come back down again. The fae woman shrieks, covering her head and rolling out of the way.

Tops laughs and flies down to the road. Landing on the ground is too much of a hazard, so he goes to a car parked by the park. He’s breathing heavily and his stomach is twisting, but at least he’s alive for the moment. Brer Rabbit is still standing on the dirt, cursing a storm and each words turning uglier with her accent.

“Bit off more than you could chew, rabbit?” Tops snickers.

Brer Rabbit stops. Then she turns her head. Her eyes are wide, glassy with danger.

“Yah think dis be funny, trash bird?” she whispers. Then she throws up her hands, “Yah best hope yah mama tol’ yah dumbass dat ev’ry closed eye ain’ sleep an’ ev’ry goodbye ain’ gone, mothafucka!”

While the proclamation sounds intimidating, Tops’ mental translator fails: “…what?”

Brer Rabbit throws out her arms and stomps her feet in the ground. She digs her digs her bare feet in, continuing the stomping. Then she lifts up her hands and the ground ripples—not just the sidewalk in Kenson Park but the sidewalk outside and the road underneath Tops. Tops looks around as the pavement bubbles and starts frothing and oozing like an infected sore. Brer Rabbit continues her stomping and twists her hands.

A figure jumps out of the gravel, leaping onto the car. Tops hops away, but another creature leaps onto it. It’s a creature made of oozing tar, the same color and temperature as the kind used to pave the streets. It has glowing yellow eyes and stinks of rotten eggs. Other tar creatures pop out of the gravel and reach for him. Tops flaps, tries to take to the air, but one of the creatures leans it head back and hocks a lump of tar at him. It lands on his wings. Tops shrieks and falls on the car.

“The fuck is this?” Tops yells.

“Yah do good work by yah Mama, babies.” Brer Rabbit is looking at the tar beasts, grinning wildly. “Yah gonna ketch that trash bird for her and Daddy Jack good.”

Tops doesn’t know what’s worst about the tar beasts—the stench or their horrible eyes and bodies. He struggles, kicking and pushing against them but he can hardly move. The creatures start to advance on the car, coating it in their hot, tarry slime. One of them has a paw on Tops, opening its toothless maw.

“No! Don’t _eat_ it!” Brer Rabbit scolds, “Bring him here!”

The tar babies crawl off the car, oozing toward Brer Rabbit. The fae remains where she is while the tar babies ooze toward her, holding Tops closely. Now Tops is the one moving and cursing. He’s shucking off the crow skin but the creatures still have a good grip on him. No matter what form he’s in, the tar is still sticky. Now he’ll just have to wash it out of his hair instead of his feathers.

“Yah know, if yah came ‘long quietly ‘fore this, it won’t have been like this!” Brer Rabbit says. She’s flipped from anger to persuasion, adding, “Daddy Jack give we low fae a good deal. Better deal than them ol’ fakey courts gives us kind.”

Tops wants to spit venom right into this woman’s eyes. He’s not a fucking lowly and he never will be, but right now he has to put his energy toward surviving. Changing into a skunk won’t help since he doubts tar creatures give a fuck about the stench. If he opened a portal, it’s likely Brer Rabbit would follow or even kill him on the way. No, he needs distance if he’s going to teleport ( _if_ he can even do that).

He has one arm free and that’s the one holding the fucking useless staff. What is it even good for at this point? Does he know any fire spells? Nope. Lightning? Double nope. All he has is the staff.

“They would want us for slaves but I say we best be buried ‘fore that happens.” continues Brer Rabbit. Tops is six feet from her and still closing in with the slow pace of the tar babies, “Daddy Jack got the best deal ‘fore us. ‘Course if yah doan want it, we ain’t gonna make yah. We all ‘bout _freedom_ in Daddy Jack’s crew--”

Tops has one arm and one shot. He has to make this count for something. He raises his free hand and flings the staff.

The staff sails right over Brer Rabbit’s head. She doesn’t even need to duck.

She snickers. “Yah thinkin’ that would word, idiot? Don’t yah know yah useless?” She cracks her back, “Yah can’t do nothin’ ‘gainst my conjure, Motherless Child! Every bit o’ asphalt, concrete, an’ gravel is my baby t’command! An’ now yah went and thrown yah ‘lil stick away!”

Tops is heavily trouble breathing. The tar creatures are still holding onto him, nearly smothering him with their awful stench. Yet, he can’t help but smile.

“I didn’t lose it.” Tops says coolly.

Tops holds out his head. There’s a low whistle and Brer Rabbit yelps as the staff collides with the back of her head. Brer Rabbit falls forward, hitting the ground. The staff lands in Tops’ hands and the tar creatures are momentarily confused, wondering what the fuck is going on. The few seconds are enough for Tops to wrestle with the beasts. He’s hot, sticky, and smells bad (and not in the way he’d like). He’s had enough of tolerating them. Hitting the tar creatures in the face with his foot is out of the question, but he can use the staff alright. The staff won’t ever leave his side—tar or no tar.

He whacks one of the creatures in the eye—the only area not covered in gunk. It drops Tops to the ground and he runs across the grass. Brer Rabbit howling but Tops avoids the sidewalk. He ducks and weaves, moving through the grass. Tar is clinging to him but the grass and dirt are making it lose its strength. He runs through the park, heading toward the line of trees where the rest of the park continues.

“This ain’t over yet!” Brer Rabbit picks herself off the ground. She speaks with a lisp so the impact likely caused her to bite her tongue.

“The hell it ain’t!” Tops yells.

A low siren wails through the air. Legionnaires are on the way, just like Tops knew they eventually would. Magic may be strong enough to keep humans from noticing fae but the Courts strongly adhere to a ‘don’t fix if it ain’t broke’ ideology. All this concentrated conjuration has likely popped up on the legionnaire radars and provoke an immediate investigation.

Tops doesn’t care. He squeezes between the trees, leaving the streetlights and the danger behind.

“I’ll find yah!” Brer Rabbit calls, “Daddy Jack gonna find yah and skin yah too!”

Tops doesn’t answer. He doesn’t bother looking over his shoulders. He knows that even a deranged fae won’t tangle with the legionnaires. He steps between the trees, tar-stained feet sinking into the mud. There’s a small river in front of him, stinking of sewage runoff and full of trash and dead branches. He doesn’t have time to be picky though. He walks across the water, moving as far as he can from the sight of the magic.

The legionnaire sirens are coming closer. A car alarm goes off nearby, likely the car that the tar creatures defiled. He wonders if magic will allow the human to see the slime or if they’ll just see dents and cracks from an unknown vandal.

His heart pounds faster. He makes it to the other side of the river but remains in the water. He knows this area well and there’s no real escape for him here. The back end of the park is a snarl of cluttered trees and then streets that empty out into the rest of the city. There’s houses and apartments but nowhere for him to hide in plain sight; not at this time of night. The closest stretch of woods is unfriendly territory. They’ll either skin him alive or rat him out.

He stands in the water, breathing heavily. The sirens are getting closer. The car alarm getting louder.

He fights not to panic. He thinks of solutions. Put on the crow skin? He can’t fly. There’s tar on his feathers. He might as well be a potato launched in the air. Put on the skunk skin? When the fuck did you ever see a skunk move quickly? Mouse? He’s too tired to run and even then, he wouldn’t get very far.

One option then.

Tops shuts his eyes. He tries to pull on those emotions that got him here in the first place. Hate. Anger. Fear. Frustration. Pain. So much fucking pain. He digs in deep into the ‘Do not disturb. Do not touch. Don’t even fucking _acknowledge_ it’ part of his brain. The part that’s full of the taste of snake mom’s fried chicken steak and songs by the fire pit with raccoon mom’s singing. He sees losing frog races and watching the soon-to-be-married dance around the maypole.

He sees Sabine’s face. She calls him a coward and tells him to stop worrying about them getting hurt or caught if they go sledding in areas they aren’t supposed to. She takes all the blame when he’s the one who sneaks extra hoe cakes and punches Sybil in the shoulder when she’s too mean. She helps him carry pails of water and tells him that he’s not stupid, but the other teachers are for making fun of the way he talks.

Tops screams, tears running down his face.

 

* * *

 

 

And then Tops is sitting on the floor of the paper mill office.

 _“Jesus fucking Christ!”_ Niklas yells. He drops a diecast model he’s holding, nearly jumping off the ground. Prospect also nearly jumps, standing next to Niklas.

The two fae are standing in what had been the paper mill’s manager office, then Tops’ apartment, and then a drug lab along with Niklas’ private space. There’s no evidence of Tops ever living here anymore. There’s nothing but tables, coffee pots, cans of Jolt Colt and other energy drinks, and the starting phase of a hydroponics garden.

“Nice of you to drop in,” Prospect says.

Tops wobbles. He thinks he’s going to pass out, but he’s not going to allow it. Not right now. He tries to stand but he’s too weak. He looks up at Prospect and Niklas, swallowing thickly.

“T-take m-me to Vi-vi-virgil.” Tops gasps.

Prospect squints. “Are you on a bad trip?”

Niklas tilts his head. “Is that… _tar_?”

“ _Now_ , fuckface!” Tops stammers. He tries to stand and fails again. He hits the ground and curses, “Shit!” 

Niklas holds up his hands. “Okay, you need to take it easy--”

Prospect tries to move in closer to Tops and immediately backs away. “Oh god! You smell like a used diaper full of egg salad on a hot day!”

“I just fought fucking Foghorn Leghorn and Peter Rabbit in a park!” Tops yells, “Now is not the time to talk about how I smell!”

“So you’re _admitting_ you smell bad,” Niklas says.

_“Take me to Virgil or so help me gods I’ll--”_

Perhaps Tops would have finished the rest of that sentence if he was less exhausted, or maybe it’s the stress of the situation and the lack of food that does him in. He immediately falls forward, smothered by the welcoming darkness of exhaustion.

So far, it’s not the _worst_ night he’s had but its quickly becoming a close contender.


	5. A Delicate Little Princess

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Updates twice a week because the next couple of chapters are on the short side.

Tops wakes up on a metal cot that’s only inches of the ground. He’s partially relieved that he’s not in the room that Virgil fucked him in, but he’s also confused as to where the hell he is. He tries to sit up but every muscle in his body screams in protest. He’s resting in a cubicle wearing a worn plaid shirt that has a suspicious cut in it surrounded by dark stains. Instinctively, he reaches up but finds that his headscarf is still in place. Good. That’s one less thing to worry about at least.

Voices are mumbling around him so he’s not alone. “Hello?” Tops calls. It even hurts to talk. He grunts and tries to sit up a second time. Failing that, he waits in silence. 

A minute later, a fae walks into the cubicle. It is a woman with giant compound eyes, antennae, wings, and long limbs that are folded so close to her body it reminds Tops more of a bent walking stick than any biological appendage. Tops has never seen a fae like her before but her features remind him of a mosquito. He’s not going to start interrogating someone who may or may not be the nurse; especially in his condition.

“Who are you?” Tops asks.

“Linda. Your nurse.” The mosquito woman moves closer to him. She raises a pointed limb and before Tops can protest, she jabs him in the arm with a needle-like finger. Tops yelps as the woman’s arm reddens with his blood. “Mmm, yes. You’re in great pain.”

“You are _not_ helping.” Tops says between clenched teeth.

“It does not hurt. Only surprises you.” Linda says, though her words sound more like _It doezz nut hurzz._

“I’m considering getting some Raid if you don’t fucking stop.” Tops growls.

Linda sniffs and removes the intruding finger. “You are suffering from extreme exhaustion and stress. When was the last time you had a full meal?”

“Describe ‘full’.”

“One that did not leave you hungry.”

Shit. Now Tops really _does_ have to think. There’s always been an element of hunger. That’s just been a situation he’s accepted since he left the mountains.

“You are taking a long time,” says Linda.

“I’m _thinking!”_ Tops insists.

“My time is valuable.” The mosquito woman leaves and returns with a steaming cup of noodles and a plastic fork. She hands both to Tops, “Eat quickly. Master Virgil wishes to see you.”

“Do I at least get pants?”Tops asks. Linda stares at him, so he guesses that isn’t an option right now. In all honesty, he’d rather eat and walk on the way to Virgil’s but his body isn’t cooperating. He slurps up the salty chicken broth and cardboard-flavored noodles as quickly as possible and follows Linda out of the room. He passes by other cubicles which are cluttered with beds, sleeping bags, and TVs. There’s even a small family with Grandma sitting on a milk crate knitting a sweater and grandkids crowded around the TV in one.

Linda leads him out of the cubicle apartments and through a doorway whose door has long since been pulled off. The carpet is soggy and everything smells of mildew, so they must be close to the bathrooms. The fluorescent lights flicker occasionally, constantly threatening to go out.

“So this is where you guys stay?” Tops was new to the gang and couldn’t even coerce a ‘hello’ from anyone. Even the kids avoided getting too close to him.

“Some of them. The storage room is only so big.” Linda buzzes but doesn’t stop walking. She’s even less talkative than Prospect.

Tops follows her, heading down the hallway, crossing the lobby, the concessions area, and finally up the stairs to where Virgil’s office/projection room is. Linda goes through all the steps that Tops hasn’t seen anyone take: politely knocking, opening the door when signaled, and then promptly shutting. The mosquito woman doesn’t even entertain the idea of setting a single narrow foot into Virgil’s personal space.

Virgil’s attention is focused on a sleek office phone sitting on his desk. He motions for Tops to sit down while he continues speaking. Tops limps over to the chair in front of the desk while Virgil continues his conversation.

“Excuse me, deputy, but my two o’ clock has arrived.” Virgil says, “How about we continue this tomorrow? My twelve o’ clock is open.” He chuckles. “We could get lunch. It’s been so long since we met in person.”

 _“Good idea. I’ll see you at Chi-Chi’s!”_ The voice on the phone says.

Virgil presses a button, ending the call. Then he scowls. “Chi-Chi’s? _Really_?” He rests his face on his hand his disappointment mounts. “I’m a crime boss, not his high school sweetheart. Who the hell does he take me for?”

Tops is more than certain that Virgil is thinking aloud, which is why he feels comfortable replying, “It could be worse. It could be at Howard Johnson’s.”

Virgil blinks and then chuckles. He sits back in his chair, smiling at Tops. “Even lowlies don’t like Howard Johnson’s?”

Tops frowns. “I’m not a lowly and I’ve only been there once. That was enough.”

“I have a similar disposition.” Virgil steeples his fingers, studying your face. “You know, you really need to start taking better care of yourself. Having you do these ‘fainting spells’ when you need to tell me crucial information is getting really tiresome.”

Tops folds his arms. “I wouldn’t have fainted if Prospect and Niklas had just taken me to you in the first place!”

Virgil raises an eyebrow. “According to them, you said that you ‘fought Foghorn Leglorn and Peter Rabbit’ and then passed out. I don’t know about you but it sounds like either you were on some very powerful drugs or suffering from an exhaustive breakdown. With your lifestyle, either seems likely.”

“Neither happened!” Tops stands, glowering at Virgil. “Some crazy conjurer bitch came at me! The same person who sent her also sent the night doctors after Prospect and me! I’m not making this up.”

Virgil continues looking at Tops, unimpressed by him suddenly standing or raising his voice. “I didn’t say you were. Honestly, Tops, be practical. I’m nearly three hundred years old and bleed angels dry to make drugs. I’m not about to deny you encountering something odd. It’s just that you describe things in a manner that make it difficult to understand the situation completely. Please, go on.”

Tops grumbles and sits back down. He tells Virgil everything he knows, from the odd fae named Brer Rabbit, her mentioning of ‘Daddy Jack’, and the odd behavior of the night doctor.

“I don’t know what was wrong with it.” Tops says, “It was like it was just running on autopilot. Brer Rabbit destroyed it before I could touch it. Why do that instead of ordering it to attack me?”

“Unless she has no command over it.” Virgil offers. His pale pink lips are in a tight frown and his clear blue eyes are narrowed in thought. He picks up his cellphone and dials a number. “However, that does not answer the question as to what it was doing in a regular park in the first place. The legionnaires, on average, quickly detect wandering undead.”

“Maybe it wasn’t wandering for very long? At least not long enough for detection.”

“Or it could be different from the regular ghoul and zombie usually encountered here.”

It could happen. Tops had learned from his raccoon mother about how legionnaires were always recalibrating their radars to detect different types of wandering undead. There had been outbreaks of different undead throughout the 18th century, such as the roaming packs of jiangshi and hungry ghosts, until the legionnaires learned to properly detect them. Tops considered himself lucky that the commune only had the occasional blight of scorched men and lunatic mummies.

The door opens and Prospect comes in. He’s holding a beeper in one hand, looking at Virgil. “What’s wrong, boss?” the gremlin asks.

Virgil looks at the tall fae. “Prospect, have your kin seen anymore night doctors?”

Prospect shakes his head. “Nothing definitive. Phoenix Knave said he might have seen one near the state line but it could have just been another kind of ghost. Bohemian Glory and Fox Vulture said there haven’t been any large clusters near Vow-of-Bliss or the Disappointments either. Obsidian Centaur has been clinging to the Unseelie side of things and I would’ve heard from them if there had been a sighting.”

“And I would have heard something if they strayed near Seelie territory.” Virgil rubs his chin, contemplating for a moment. Then he waves away Prospect. “Tell your kin to keep an ear to the ground and air for someone going by the monikers ‘Daddy Jack’ and ‘Brer Rabbit’. Keep your beeper on. I might need you again.”

Prospect nods and leaves the room without even glancing once in Tops’ direction. Tops guesses that the airplane gremlin is happiest when he has a purpose.

“So, you don’t know who this ‘Daddy Jack’ is either?” Tops asks.

“No, which leads me to believe that it is either an alias or this is someone from another region.” Virgil says, “I was able to acquire _some_ information about them. Night doctors were common to the South during the early 19th century and continued to amass in number before tapering off a decade ago. I’m not sure they’re suddenly active now and in an entirely different area but this begs investigation.”

“By us?”

“ _Us_? Who do you think we are?” Virgil scoffs, “We’re criminals, Tops. Have no illusions about that. We’re not exactly in the business of solving mysteries here. Onto more important matters.” He leans further back in the chair, tapping his finger on the desk. “You know, you’re really turning into a pain, Tops. Out of the goodness of my heart, I introduce you to my precious sibling to teach you magic but instead, you squander it and run off.” Another pause and more tapping. “How did you do that exactly?”

Shit. He should have known that would come back out. Tops hopes he can spin this in a way that doesn’t leave the blame resting on his shoulders or have him enduring another one of Virgil’s ‘punishments’.

“I just wanted out. That’s all.” Tops says. Virgil gives him a long stare and Tops stares back, waiting for the crime lord to challenge him on his honesty. The silence goes on for too long so Tops concedes. “It’s not the first time I’ve teleported. I usually have better control over it.”

“You didn’t use it when I had a gun to your head.”

“I said ‘control’, not ‘mastery’.”

“Those are the same things.”

“They’re not.” Tops huffs, “Unless I’m opening a gate, I’m never sure where I’m going or if I’ll end up in the same place twice. I was lucky lately that I only went places I had already been.” That and he had been so angry and desperate to just _leave_ , but Virgil doesn’t need to be privy to that information. “Usually I can’t teleport at all. The lifeforce from the dead angel must have…energized me, I guess.”

“You know”—Virgil stands, walks over to Tops with loud pronounced steps. He runs his fingers along Tops’ throat and rests them on his cheeks—“I treat you far better than most of my employees and I think you take my politeness for granted.” His eyes widen and the cold blue stares deep into Tops. “Let me be frank with you: I didn’t send you to my sibling for you to waste our time. Whatever issue you have, get over it. Not everyone is interested in your precious, meager secrets that you wish to cling to. I have larger goals in mind. One, I’m ordering you to actually eat something sensible. There’s no point in having a mage if they keep trying to die on me every time I turn around from their own stupidity. Second, you’re going back to learn a bit with Alichino”—he grins—“and if you don’t, _well_ \--”

“You’re not going to shove something up my ass again, are you?”

“I could.” Virgil smiles. “Although I’m not sure how that would dispose you toward obeying me. Unless you really _want_ that.”

Tops briefly weighs the pros and cons of having yet another object in his ass but decides that’s a debate for another time. “Not what I’m into,” he lies, “but I was planning on going back anyway.”

“I’m so glad we’re in agreement.” Virgil’s thin fingers move to Tops’ hair. He tilts the other fae’s head only slightly, so Tops is looking up at him. “I’m only going to say this once: don’t fuck it up. Your kind of nonsense wastes my time and that wastes my money. Now, repeat after me: what do you specifically not want to waste?”

“Your time--”

“My. Fucking. _Money_.” Virgil hisses. He then smiles sweetly, no different from Alichino in their painted face. “And all I’ve had to deal so far is a spoiled brat sitting on a pile of my madstones that occasionally spits up gold. You better keep laying those gold eggs or you’re going to find yourself eating zombie dust and sitting on a long bench covered in shit and piss with the other slaves.”

“You don’t have to threaten me,” Tops says, though his heart is pounding fast enough that it feels like its slamming into his ribcage. He may be a cowardly fuck but he’s not going to just roll over for Virgil. “I’ve seen the zombie room. I know what’s in store for me, so just…let me go.”

Virgil’s grip tightens, pulling the hair harder. Tops clenches his teeth but refuses to let the pain show on his face.

Virgil’s smile widens. “Or what?” he asks, “What could you _possibly_ do, Topper Emere? You have no friends, no family, and no mastery of your magic. Everything you once owned is mine and it wasn’t worth much to begin with. You’re lowly-born and won’t even live the quarter of the century I already have. What reason do you have to _not_ fear me? And what reason do I have to listen to your demand that I just ‘let you go’? I can do _whatever_ I want with you, _whenever_ I want.”

“No, you can’t.”

Virgil’s smile wavers for a half-second. “Can’t?”

“No. You fucking can’t.” Tops says from behind clenched teeth. “If you wanted me dead or raped or whatever gets you off, you would have already done it. But you can’t. You need me _alive_ and _sane_ for whatever fucked up plan you have in mind and…fuck, I need _you_. I need your resources, your money, and your brains because I won’t go back to what I was before. I’d rather be dead and you…you _like_ it. You _like_ that I fight you. You _like_ toying with me because if I didn’t, you’d be bored to tears. I’d just be another sycophant for you to deal with. Somebody that kisses your ass and stabs you in the throat when you’re down. So, you need me and I need you. And even more than that, I may not have a lot of time but I’ll remember this. I’ll remember everything.”

Virgil’s face is unreadable. He’s no longer smiling, nor is his face that of fury. It is of incomprehensible serenity.

“Memory is useless if you’re dead.” He whispers.

“So is revenge.” Tops smiles. “You know the value of remembering everything everyone has ever done to you. Like you said, we have to know who we are. We’re criminals and you have your own vendettas. Otherwise, why kill angels at all?”

Virgil’s face is still blank. There is nothing behind those icy, doll-like eyes. Then he chuckles. It’s a low murmur that quickly escalates until the sound bounces off the walls. He lets go of Tops’ hair and runs a hand down the side of his face. The left hand strokes his cheek and then playfully pats him. Then Virgil steps away, leans against his desk.

Virgil has a meaningless smile on his face. “You know, you’re not the first to know of the angels but you’re one of the few to ask. You are right though, we do need each other and I’m not the kind of person to injure my allies.”

“But humiliation isn’t off the table.” Tops snorts.

“Humiliation is a different kind of injury that we all have to experience sometime.” Now Virgil is back to truly smiling, enjoying Tops’ words or perhaps the memory of the other fae’s humiliations. “And it’s not like you _don’t_ enjoy it.”

“That’s kind of a grey area in regards to what’s going on, don’t you think?” Tops forces himself to stand, though his legs are still shaky. “Well, I got my own requests to make of you. We’re allies but you treat me like dirt like all the other grunts. If I’m going to be a mage, I’m going to need my own things. Like, my own space for one thing.”

“I’m more than certain Prospect informed you that you must earn such a thing.”

“I think I’ve earned at least a room with a damn door.” Tops says, “Think of it this way: you want _everyone_ in your gang knowing _everything_ I do for you? I wouldn’t be able to meet with you where I actually stay, unless you want to sit on heroin needles.” Virgil rubs his chin and he adds, “How am I supposed to improve my craft in that kind of condition? Also, I need clothes and money. I’m not selling anymore so I have no way of getting money on my own. I need to be fed if you want me to do my best work.”

“You’re turning into less of an ally and more of a pet.” Virgil sighs, “Fine. You will receive a small allowance for the time being and you won’t be restricted to eating from here alone, as you’re sure to be moving between here and Alichino’s area.”

It’s better than what Tops could hope for. “Thank you.”

Virgil reaches inside his desk and tosses a small wad of human cash at Tops. Tops catches it and counts the cash with the speed of a practiced street seller. Its 300 dollars divided into 20-dollar bills. It’s only a small fraction of what Tops would make over weeks of selling but since getting supplies and paying off Niklas isn’t part of the agreement, he guesses it’s okay.

Virgil sits in the chair behind his desk and waves his hand at Tops. “Tell Prospect to show you to a spare room downstairs. He’ll know which one.”

Tops eagerly leaves the office. Instead of finding Prospect, he marches directly to the general store. Cookie is behind the counter, taking in madstones with plastic gloves and exchanging them for regular dolls. The madstones disappear behind the counter and the other fae walk off. Once that transaction is done, Tops moves in.

“Show me the back.” Tops says.

Cookie grins, showing off her needle-like amphibian teeth. “What back?”

Tops slams 40 dollars on the table. “Cut the bullshit.”

Cookie looks at the dollars and walks over to the doorway separating the customers from the workers. She opens it, using a slimy green hand to motion Tops inside.

Tops may not have been educated in a school but he knows how stores work: there’s _always_ a back. He walks into the area, scanning the concession area. Behind the glass storage containing displays of ancient candy and drink cup sample sizes are locked cashboxes and candy tubs full of human money. Tops suspects that the drink fountains and minifridges are likely full of other contraband as well.

“What do you do with the madstones?” Tops asks.

“Purify them and send them back out. That way we don’t have to deal with the Court’s tracking spells on them.” Cookie touches the wall next to a fountain drink dispenser. There’s a _click_ and part of the wall slides away. The frog fae steps inside and Tops follows closely.

The storage area behind the counter has racks of goods plus a cold storage for drinks and quick frozen meals. There’s a rack of jerky, nuts, band-aids, car parts, and anything else people could need on a day-to-day basis. It reminds Tops of the general store back in the commune, which was often in low supply unless the traders were visiting. He ignores the shiny selection of candy, roaming over to a display of shoes and shirts. Most of them still have the price tags and security clamps.

“Where did you get most of this stuff?” Tops is already eyeing a T-shirt and pants hanging on the clothing rack.

“Most of it’s trade-ins.” Cookie says, “Fae lift here and there and they trade them for money or supplies. We keep what we need and the rest gets sent to the cardiff traders if they’re looking for something particular.”

“Seelie deal in stolen goods?” Tops is studying the contents of the shoeboxes. There are several kinds of boots. Now he just needs to debate how tall he wants the heel to be.

“Seelie and Unseelie deal in anything they want.” Cookie snorts, “If they want it bad enough, they pay the cash and don’t ask too many questions. How often do aristocrat vegetarians think about the lowlies who pick their food?”

Tops doesn’t like to consider it. Most of the vegetables farmed in the commune had been traded away and he never learned whose plates they ended up on. Tops never asked his snake mother even though trading such vegetables was her livelihood.

He decides to go with an entirely new outfit, including a beanie cap for his head. Then he gets a bathroom pass, has a nice long shower, and takes off to locate Prospect.

Prospect isn’t far. He’s sitting the lobby, speaking with the other airplane gremlins. Once Tops approaches, the other gremlins drift off, not making eye contact with him.

“Look at you! New clothes and in one piece.” Prospect snickers, “After your meltdown, I thought the boss was gonna take a pinky at least.”

“What is this, the yakuza?” Tops snorts. When he sees the lack of humor in Prospect’s face, he frowns. “Seriously?”

“It’s been known to happen. Not often though.” Prospect says, “Usually Virgil prefers the old-fashioned bullet method of dealing with people. Pinkies are for if you fuck up but not _too_ badly.”

A pinky isn’t worth much but Tops considers every one of his limbs to be precious. He distracts himself from the thought of removal by saying, “Virgil says I get a room downstairs from now on.”

Prospect’s metal lips quirk into a smirk. “Okay, but not sure if you’ll like it much better.”

For this little adventure, Prospect leads him across the lobby and onto the other side, and through a door that says _Employees only._ The two exit out into the parking lot behind the abandoned cinema. The cars parked here are for the employees of the dollar store and the pavement is cracked with grass and weeds. There are two large metal doors, one of which has been boarded up and blocked off. It takes Prospect a few minutes to get the remaining metal door to budge and when he opens, the wave of must hits Tops in the face. Prospect fishes in his pocket and pulls out a flashlight, shining it inside. Then he tosses it to Tops before walking down the slope into a small square room. The plane cement walls are marked with graffiti; some of it human and the rest fae characters and letters. Pipes move across and disappear into the walls, leading into circuit breakers crowded with old wires. Showed in the corner are metal containers covered with the dried remains of bird and bat droppings, filled with jugs and boxes of _something._ Cobwebs crowd the room corners. Next to this is a tent littered with newspaper, trash bags, and old clothes.

“What’s this?” Tops squints at the pipes and the breaker boxes. He only recognizes them because of the many ventures Niklas recruited him for when summer storms knocked the electricity out. “Seriously? You’re putting me in the breaker room?”

“Don’t touch nothing.” Prospect breathes slowly and sneezes, waving dust away from his face.  “We’re lucky this place still gets power and we’re just leeching off it. Having to wire it is a pain in the ass.”

Tops looks at the tent. It’s made of a dull fabric and in a traditional triangular shape, which only serves to remind him of his snake mother’s tent when she was hunting or when she was getting ready to leave with the other traders. Tops moves closer to the tent and finds a torn rucksack, small camping table, and a plaid quilted sleeping bag.

“Who stayed here before?” Tops asks.

“Not sure.” Prospect admits, “Whoever stayed here was before my time.”

Before his time? Virgil couldn’t have moved into the area until recently. The Bridgewater Triangle is infamous in the homestead rather than the colonies. There would have been some noise if they had moved in earlier…unless Virgil did it quietly. But what for?

“How long have gremlins been working for Virgil?” he asks.

“Does it matter? Long enough.” Prospect studies the breakers, some of which are covered with duct tape. “You better figure out a system for living here. This place isn’t close to the bathrooms either.”

Suddenly Tops understands what the odd buckets in the corner were used for and why the room smells especially stagnant compared to the rest of the building.

“How charmingly rustic.” Tops says. Like the old warehouse, this is just another step toward a luxury loft and a bar stocked with liquor. He looks to Prospect, who is easing toward the door. “One of these pipes must be water. See if you can get someone to jury-rig water to run this way.”

Prospect turns and folds his arms. “What do you see?”

“A fae standing around with nothing better going on in his life and not listening to me in the slightest.”

“I am a _fucking airplane gremlin_.” Prospect points to himself, “Born and raised in an airlift. I was made to do three things: fly, fight, and fuck. What part of my appearance says ‘Oh yeah, this guy’s totally my own personal foot-servant’!”

“The part that makes me your boss.” Tops says. Before Prospect counters, he adds, “Listen, Budgie: no matter how you slice it, I’m a step above you in rank and I’m rising up the ladder. There might be setbacks but at the end of the day, you still answer to me. When I’m at the top, I’m not going to forget those that helped me get there.” Prospect frowns and Tops moves in closer. “Do you seriously want to do grunt work all your life? Hunting down drug dealers and getting shot at by ghosts? Escorting whores and lugging around dead bodies? You know what I see when I look at you?”

Prospect says nothing.

“I see a vintage car worth ten grand, I see a walk-in closet of collect die-cast cars, a Malibu vacation home, wristwatches, and guitars. I see long weekends spent windsurfing and eating caviar off the hips of yemaja supermodels in the Caymans. I see tailor-made designer suits and Hullywodland premieres with merchandise mailed to you and writers begging you to fund their latest coke dreams. A life like that is _built_ on the backs of people like us.”

“We’re not the same.” Prospect says but his voice is barely above a whisper.

“We’re not,” Tops says, “but we’re close enough that I have some idea of what we _could_ be. We can my vision a reality, Prospect, and all we need to kick that off is some water.”

Prospect swallows, red piggish eyes still on him. “I’ll see what I can do,” He mumbles. He walks out the breaker room, adding, “I’m still not your errand boy!”

Tops grins, letting the gremlin think he’s still in charge. Then he rolls up his sleeves and gets to work. Cleaning had always been a daily chore back in the commune. In the clandestine neighborhood, things were always concentrated on making sure it was self-sustaining. The only structures were the sodhouses but they lacked a sewer system, electricity, and all the modern conveniences. There was always night soil to be hauled away to the fields, water to be taken from the creeks and lakes and then purified for drinking and washing, clothes to be sewn from older rags, and foraging to be done from dumping.

Tops hated it but it had to be done. It became a quiet, meditative time for all those involved with long stretches of silence and thoughts fermenting. Years later, Tops is doing the same. He finds a broom in the corner and sweeps out the dust and animal droppings up the slope and into the parking lot. He goes through the tent, discerning what’s useful and what should be traded away. He doubts its worth much but he’ll haggle with Cookie or maybe find some of the traders that occasionally wander through the city.

He has a recurring thought: how long has Virgil been in New England? If Virgil has been lurking in the shadows, what for? He’s an all-powerful crime lord. There’d be no advantage to relocating somewhere else without his allies at least knowing. Tops has only been in New England for five years, but he would have heard from before if the Bridgewater Triangle were deeply entrenched in the area. He learned about all the local gangs within a year.

Unless there was a crucial reason Virgil needed to hide. Someone he was avoiding, but who? Once again, there’s a part of the puzzle Tops is missing.

He opens the metal cabinets, studying all the jugs inside. The ancient jugs and soda bottles of alcohol are empty or have gone to vinegar. There are also broken thermostats, jars of urine, giant bags of popcorn kernels, VHS tapes, and light bulbs. He goes into the next cabinet and finds plastic jugs with chemical labels. Tops doesn’t recognize the chemical name so he unscrews the cap. He takes a single sniff and his head swims.

“Fuck!” Tops coughs, “This is strong!”

“The fuck are you doing?” Prospect asks.

Tops looks at him. He’s squatting in the corner, looking at the gremlin. Behind Prospect’s muscled shoulders is a squat pale thing with large eyes. Tops doesn’t recognize the race but it going by the pale skin and relatively hairlessness, its likely Unseelie or Unseelie-descended.

“Trying to figure out what I got.” Tops says, “What’s it look like?”

The thing on Prospect’s shoulder jumps off and runs around the room. Its tiny claws scratch at the walls and its flat nose sniffs the stale air.

Prospect walks over to Tops and grabs the jug. “What are you: a dog?” He points to the faded and smeared label on the jug. “This isn’t just moonshine you found in your grandma’s basement. This is _Liquid Easy-Off_. It’s strong enough to chew through gum that’s been stuck on movie floors for decades. Just a drop will strip the stony skin off a cardiff giant. Keep sniffing and you’ll burn up what’s left of your brain cells.”

Tops snatches the jug back. “I know my way around chemicals, dumbass.” He looks back to the table, where there are at least twenty identical jugs. If this room has this many jugs full of cleaning chemicals, it’s likely it had been a janitorial closet in the past. But where had the janitor gone? And why were the chemicals left to just sit here?

Prospect scowls at the other jugs. “We should trade this stuff off. Light a match and you might blow yourself sky high.”

“Not every chemical is flammable.” Tops studies the label but can’t see any symbols that imply flammability. “Do you know for _certain_ this can strip a cardiff giant?”

Prospect nods. “The stony misers use it to clean off their old skin when they’re shedding granite. I heard some of them use the leftovers to get high, or sell it to the court mages for spell ingredients.”

“If there’s money to be made, why aren’t we selling these jugs to the cardiff giants?”

Prospect frowns. “Only King Sheba knows how to communicate with the cardiff giants. They don’t do business with anyone but her or her inner circle. Put your fingers in the she-wolf’s pot and you’ll come out without a hand.”

Tops figured that was the situation. As he was born outside of the Courts and never gone near one, Tops has only heard of cardiff giants. His snake mother would always regale them with tales of them when she returned home from her merchant travels.

“The cardiff giants are a most lonesome people,” his snake mother had said one night. As she spoke, Tops’ raccoon mother would write in his journal, dictating everything she said for the commune records and trader almanac. “Not much is known about them and every secret they have is privy to her golden majesty. Those who know the giants best are the stores they patronize along their mercantile trails: the saloons, the whorehouses, and hotels. They eat nothing but water with a geode in it if available and perhaps a block of gypsum if they hunger for it. I hear rumors of them being from New York or Iowa but that’s just speculation.”

A scratching sound brings Tops’ thoughts back to the current moment. The strange creature Prospect brought with him has finished its sniffing and scratching. It runs over to Prospect, jabbering in heavily-accented Unseelie. It’s a dialect Tops is unsure of but he’s more than certain Niklas with his homestead education and upbringing would have a better idea.

Prospect nods and looks to Tops. “There’s water pipes but it hasn’t flown this way in some time. It’ll take some smooth talking and cash to get water this way.”

Just perfect. Tops looks at the creature. “And who is…?”

“Rance. She’s a Hopskinville goblin.” Prospect says. The goblin jabbers and Prospect translates, “She wants to build her nest in the walls and…suck on the boiler? What?” More back and forth before Prospect nods, “She wants the fumes that’ll come from the old boiler. Apparently, she likes it. Then she’ll see about getting the water.”

“Fine.” It’s no skin off Tops’ nose if a goblin wants to get high on boiler fumes. Hell, he might get high himself for old time’s sake. “How do we turn the boiler back on?”

More jabbering. “She doesn’t know.”

Of _course,_ it wouldn’t be that easy. Tops looks at the various storage cabinets and containers. “If this place is untouched, there must be a manual around here somewhere that I can use.” He could always enlist the help of Niklas since they’d repaired his boiler enough times. “Consider us in business, Rance. Keep working for me and I’ll make you a rich…whatever-you-are.” 

“Gerbalin,” says Rance in their usual mish-mash.

Tops tries not to sigh at his sad situation. He only commands the help of two fae and one of them he can’t even understand. He knows things may take years to fall into place but this is a still a miserable start. He decides to not wait around in the janitorial closet. He needs to move his legs and start thinking about the next step to take.

“I’ll look for the manual later.” Tops moves to the doorway, “The Dollar Store next to us sells toys, right?”

Prospect shrugs. “Cheap ones I guess, but sure.”

Tops nods. “I’m going to need some help then.” He looks at Rance. “You can stay here.”

Rance jabbers something but Prospect frowns.

“I have _other things_ to do, you know.” Prospect says.

“No, you don’t.” Tops says, “or you wouldn’t be here in the first place.”

Prospect grumbles but follows him out of the janitorial closet. Rance remains in the closet, scrambling over things and trying to carve out space for herself like a wild animal. Tops will let her be as long as she doesn’t move things. He makes a mental note to learn a bit more about Hopkinsville goblins and maybe her strange pidgin.

Even as he’s digging through the dumpster, Tops is optimistic. His arm is elbow deep in trash and yet he knows things are going to be alright.

He can do this.


	6. Practice Makes Perfect

Things move slowly after acquiring the janitorial closet; much slower than Tops cares for. Rance enjoys wriggling through the tiny spaces and dark corners of the janitorial closet, but without a lit boiler, Tops has no bargaining tools to get the water running. Tops prowls through the closet, unearthed ancient film reels and dusty manuals but he’s unsure which applies to the boiler and which doesn’t. Still, he trades in the miscellaneous materials to Cookie at the general store.

Cookie grins when Tops brings the box of film reels. “You found reels? Great! The homestead theaters are always looking to buy these up.”

“Homestead movie theaters use human film reels?” Tops asks.

Cookie nods. “Yeah. Its cheaper than paying Hullywodland prices for homestead films.” She tilts her head. “You never been to a homestead cinema?”

“Not my scene.” Tops spent most of his time in the homestead slumming around strip clubs and other seedy aspects of nightlife. Movie theaters had never really appealed to him in the first place, unless it was on a VHS in the comfort of his own home where he could relax. There was just something… _unsettling_ about being in the dark with hundreds of strangers. Still, Tops has other concerns, “Do you know how long the janitorial closet has been empty?”

“We have a janitorial closet?”

“The entrance is outside. Its where the electricity and the boiler are.” Tops frowns. “You’ve _never_ been in there?”

Cookie shakes her green head. “I just run the store. I never go out back anywhere else.”

“So you weren’t here when you first moved into the cinema?”

“No. By the time I came here, the electricity was already set up and things were cleaned out, at least on our side. I have no idea what the humans see, if any come in here.” She grins. “It’s a pretty nice setup. A lot better than all the other miserable jobs I worked before.”

Tops nods. He trades in the film reels for human cash, but his mind is buzzing the entire time. How could no one know the janitorial closet was there? There’s electricity throughout the cinema. _Someone_ must have gone into the closet at one point and turned it on. Unless…someone was here at an earlier time; the same person that had lived in the janitorial closet. He considered asking Virgil about it, but then dismissed it. Knowing what a prick Virgil is, he’s just as likely to jerk Tops around for fun rather than answer the question directly.

Still, the situation consumes his thoughts. Even when he visited Alichino, Tops ponders about the question of the janitorial closet and its untouched nature.

“You’ve been thinking a lot lately.” Alichino says, “I’d suggest not doing that too much. Rattling your brain might crush the pea.”

Tops glowers at the false child. He’s foregone sitting in a pile of stuffed animals for the time being and is on a tiny plastic chair that’s roughly two sizes too small. Alichino is sitting across from him, posed with their toy tea set and plastic food. Tops feels like he’s in a life-size version of Barbie’s Dream House.

“I’m starting to wonder why I come here.” Tops grumbles, “It’s been—what? Four days and nothing’s happened. No one’s seen anything out of the ordinary; not even those paranoid legionnaires.” He folds his arms. “Not the night doctors, Brer Rabbit, or any conjuring bullshit.”

“They will eventually.”Alichino pours their teapot and real hot tea spills out, filling the room with the scent of mint and chamomile. “Conjurers attract each other like magnets and metal. From what you said before, it sounds like this Brer Rabbit waits for you to make your move and goes to you.”

Tops nods. Alichino is annoying but being in their playroom does allow him to think clearly. He doesn’t have a to deal with Prospect’s sarcasm or the constant noise of the cinema or machinery in the walls. “She wants me alive for this ‘Daddy Jack’ or at least sane enough to answer to him.” He pauses, thinking about the appearance of the fae. “There’s something else that bothers me…the fur on Brer Rabbit had been stapled on. What for? Is that some kind of conjuring spell?”

Alichino frowns. “Not one that _I’m_ familiar with.” They point to Tops. “Enough about that! Big brother says you made a space for yourself in his cinema.”

“I don’t know if it’s ‘his’ cinema, but yes.” Tops is more thankful to have a door and a more traditional bed. He’s been using the sleeping bag as a mattress and other blankets to wrap himself up when the nights turn freezing in the closet.

“That’s good!” Alichino giggles and sips their tea. “Conjurers need their own space to do their craft. Now that you got your space, you can push the boundaries of what you have. Now, you can figure out how to break it.”

“It?”

Alichino points to the staff. “Tell me where you found that.”

Tops’ thumb moves along the rough, carved wood of the staff. “When I was a child, I fell into a river. I would have drowned if I hadn’t grabbed a root. It broke off once I surfaced and since then it wouldn’t leave, even when I threw it away. I gave up trying to get rid of it and decided to carve it into a staff.”

“Its cursed.” Alichino’s echoes in the dark playroom. “A wood like that has its own will and ideas about how things should go. Its been feeding on your magic, demanding sacrifices.” Tops says nothing and Alichino’s breathing slows. “Can’t you hear it whispering to you?”

The wall of screen light up one by one. They flicker with images of children sitting in cozy, cushioned red rooms. Some are on their deathbed from starvation while others are mummified by time and heat, clinging to stuffed animals and plastic play food. One thinning body rests on a pile of books and clings to a stuffed pony, immobile from hunger.

There must be a hundred different rooms in the playroom and all hidden from Tops’ sight if it weren’t for the screens.

“That wood is alien. It didn’t grow here, but fell like angels.” Alichino continues, “It was washed in our water, bobbed in sacred salt and came toward the shores, nestling in the muddy banks. It grew, cradling you until you were gone. It kept growing, waiting for you to return. Then it smelt you and sought you and sang back to you like a Mama cradling their child like your own Mama never did.”

“My mother loved me.” Tops thinks of comfy evenings by the fire pit, where his raccoon mother taught him the alphabet and read _The Lord of the Rings_ in his soothing voice.

“No, they didn’t.” The playroom is darker now. All Tops can see are two blue dots that may be Alichino’s eyes. “A lowly is always someone else’s child.”

Tops looks away from the clear blue. Even in the playroom darkness, he still sees the staff. He feels the wood, from every inch of smoothness to the knots of age and environment. Alichino’s word lower to a dull mumble and then become nothing. Tops’ fingers are on the staff and his ears are attuned to something else. He tries to hear the staff’s susurration but instead, his mind wanders.

He thinks of the last summer’s end festival. 

He thinks of cornstalks taller than him and hiding in the mazes from Sabine. He tastes blackberry juice on his tongue and sees his mouth turn purple from eating a whole basket. He cheers at the frog races, even though he knows he’ll lose. He sits next to Sabine and watches the fae of marrying age dance around the maypole while a guitar plays. His raccoon mother sings the lowly songs since he has all the words recorded.

He hears his mother’s voice singing those traditional songs.

 

_I’ve been ‘buked an’ I’ve been scorned, children,_

_I’ve been ‘buked an’ I’ve been scorned,_

_I’ve been talked about, sho’s you’re born,_

Tops hears the staff whisper but the voice of his mothers, his sister, the commune elders, and the crackle of the central bonfire.

 

_Dere is trouble all over dis world,_

_Children, dere is trouble all over dis world,_

_Ain’t gwine to lay my ‘ligion down_

_Children, ain’t gwine to lay my ‘ligion down._

 

“I’m no lowly.” Tops announces to the air.

The air says nothing and neither does Alichino. He’s not even sure if Alichino is still in the dark playroom. The screens are black and there is nothing else around him but toys and the whispering of the staff’s wood.

Tops breaks the staff or his knee.

Or he tries to at least. It would have been a perfectly dramatic moment—true proof of his growth and maturity as a fae—but nothing happens. The rigid wood bounces off his boney knee as solid as ever. So Tops tries to snap it again.

And again.

And again.

Soon, he is sweaty and enraged and impotent and ineffective as always. The cane’s mumbles has only grown louder. Now that its awake, it won’t stop singing to him. He can’t stop hearing the sounds and sensation Tops thought he had discarded long ago. He can’t stop tasting the fresh, warm cider of the commune apples and he can’t stop hearing his sister’s terrified scream.

“Fuck you! Damn you! Fucking shit fuck!” Tops screams into the darkness. He fills the air with incontinent curses but nothing soothes his rage. He strikes the staff against the playroom floor but the only result is a painful ache in his arms.

“Damn you.” Tops growls, “I was happy not knowing. I was happy just fucking _forgetting_ but you…had to bring it all back up, didn’t you? You fucking bastard!”

More silence. Slowly, the playroom lights turn back on. The play table is gone and Alichino is perched on a ten-foot pile of Beanie babies with their legs spread out as if it’s a throne.

“There’s no growth without pain. Even a baby knows that.” Alichino says, “If you can’t break the staff, I can’t teach you anything.” They point to the wall and a red hole opens up. “So get out.”

“…excuse me?” Tops growls.

“There’s no point in filling a cup with holes in it.” Alichino says, “You can come back once you’ve broken the staff. Until then, you’re on your own. I’ll let big brother know though, so he doesn’t think you’re skipping.”

Tops scowls but heads for the hole anyway. As much as he hates to admit it, the moppet is right. He’s not useful if he can’t attain his full abilities. He can’t even teleport whenever he wants. The only thing he has control over is his shapeshifting and doing that still exhausts him.

The red hole leads him to the parking lot. At this time of night, the most of the stores in the mall are closed or closing so the parking lot is predominantly empty. Those cars that remain belong to the employees or security.

Tops looks at the staff. It still whispers to him, although it’s a low mumble. He decides then and there that a quick flight is what he needs to put his mind back. Then he’ll figure out how to ignore the noise later on. He pulls on his crow skin and takes to the air, flying high above the city.

 

* * *

 

 

In all honesty, Tops finds cities to be distasteful. Sometimes—in moments when he’s alone with his thoughts and without the distraction of a book or alcohol—he misses the quiet isolation of the commune and the long stretches of dark roads. It’s harder to hide in plain sight with every road lit by yellow lights and every road bearing the threat of some drunk driver looking to mash you into the street. His raccoon mother had gone in a lot of details about the danger of cars and how fae were often the victims of said car accidents during the early years of driving, especially in places like Detroit (wherever _that_ was). Tops thinks of his raccoon mother’s words and flies around on a mental autopilot.

He finds himself above the junkyard and landfill. He curses his lazy brain for dragging him back here. This place is starting to become nothing but bad memories for him. First, a deal of a lifetime nearly killed him and then he ended up in Virgil’s clutches. Luck is the only reason he’s still whole and breathing.

Still, Tops lands on a pile of cardboard boxes. It’s the highest area and relatively clean compared to the other pile of refuse in the landfill. The wind moans, whistling between gaps made in the garbage piles. He strains his ears but he can’t hear anything of the…creature…that lives in the landfill.

No one believes him about the creature, of course. The night doctors everyone in the Bridgewater Triangle is sure of only because of Prospect’s testimony (having earned their respect) but only Tops has seen the landfill beast. Tops would argue that there’s the missing jersey devil to account for but no one seems concerned about that.

Tops sheds his skin and remains on the box pile. He pats the guns in his pockets, but he’s not sure how well they’ll do against the landfill beast. He isn’t even sure if it has a real body or if its ghostly like a spirit.

The wind blows again, this time violently and carrying noise with it. He hears words carried on it, only slightly above a whisper. 

 

_Sometimes I feel like a motherless child,_

_Sometimes I feel like a motherless child,_

_Sometimes I feel like a motherless child,_

_A long way from home, a long way from home._

 

The white sheets swarm toward Tops. One of them holds giant, rusting scissors and aims the blades towards Tops. Tops swerves, barely missing the blade. He slides down the pile of cardboard boxes as if gliding through the water, but there are night doctors waiting for him on the bottom. Other night doctors leave the shadows of the landfill piles, moving in toward him. Two seize his arm and shoulder, forcing him to kneel on the ground.

Tops lets them. The night doctors surround him, clouding the air with their dry, decaying scent. Tops reaches for one of them but only manages to snare the end of a ragged sheet in his hand. The night doctor hisses but does not move.

“Do it, you fucks.” Tops hisses, “Fucking _do_ it.”

The night doctors don’t oblige him. They’re still puppets in the grand schemes of another.

“Ain’t this a bitch?” The snicker is familiar and grating to Tops’ ears.

Tops looks up and sees Brer Rabbit looking down at him from ten feet in the air. She stands on a blob of asphalt and concrete, whose malformed hands are holding onto her feet. Her face is nearly split by a wide grin. Her eyes are red and the staples where fur meets flesh are equally irritated.

“Here I was expectin’ a nasty fight an’ instead yah just puss out!” Brer Rabbit cackles. She spreads out her fingers, remaining ten feet away from Tops as she poses on her tarry creature. “What happened, eh? Yah lose yah nerve afta I give yah that good ol’ fashioned beatin’? Or is yah comin’ over to our side now, trash eater?”

Tops says nothing. His eyes are on the night doctor whose cloak he’s gripped. The sheet it’s covered in must be hundreds of years old. He’s impressed that it’s still held together after all this time.

“Still nothin’? Shoot!” Brer Rabbit pouts. “What a fuckin’ disaster this is. Daddy Jack’s gonna be disappointed in yah, but a job’s a job.” She spreads out her fingers. “Yah’ll like our side, trash boy. It ain’t like none of them boujee Courts.”

“You know what?” Tops says.

Brer Rabbit goes back to grinning. “What?”

“Ya jabber too fuckin’ much.” Tops says.

Then Tops yanks on the night doctor’s shroud with all his strength. The fabric tears violently and the magic in the air vibrates, then gives a violent _pop!_ The night doctor screams as its mummified face is revealed and the blue glow of undeath shimmers in its empty eye sockets. The corpse under the sheet is in faded plaid and ragged denim pants. Strands of hair still cling to their scalp.

The other night doctor shriek and move away from the revealed one. It swings it’s sword, now freed from the control once forced on it. The freed night doctor moves towards the other, slashing and stabbing freely with all the anger of someone forced to do bidding beyond the grave.

Tops dives and rolls from the creatures. In one hand he has the torn scrap of cloth and in the other his staff. He keeps his eyes on the rabbit fae.

“Oh no! Yah ain’t getting’ away!” Brer Rabbit snarls. There’s anger on her face but also desperation. What could she be afraid of now?

Tops doesn’t waste time on that thought. He tosses the sheet at Brer Rabbit before the tar can reach him. She screams of course, because who wouldn’t? It’s a cloak that’s been on a dead person for god knows how long. Tops is more than certain it’s riddled with flies or other insects. Its only a few seconds of distraction but its all Tops needs to get a gun out.

Brer Rabbit tosses away the dirty cloak. Her eyes are wide enough to be bulging out of her head. “Y-yah--” she stammers, “Yah shouldn’t be able to _do_ that!”

Tops smirks. It’s just him versus the conjurer woman and he’s done running from danger. Its either he faces this woman down now or he’ll be running from her for the rest of his life.

“Fuck this shit!” Brer Rabbit’s tar creature lowers her to the ground. “Go mah babies! Show dis fool who he’s messin’ wit!”

The tar blob splits apart, moving into the large-headed creatures. They’re mixed with asphalt and concrete, leeching from the ground and filling the air with an acrid, stinking odor. They move quickly but Brer Rabbit doesn’t know the landfill as much as Tops does. Tops backs up and aims his gun at the creatures.

“Yah a right fool thinkin’ that gun’ll do _anything!”_ Brer Rabbit laughs, showing her buckteeth in the moonlight. “Dis place is load wit’ everythin’ I could evva need! Yah in for it now, suckah!”

“That’s funny,” Tops says, “because it's _not_ a gun.”

Tops squeezes the trigger and a stream of liquid squirts from it. The chemical splashes a tar-creature in the face. The creature shrieks and half its face melts with purple-black smoke fuming from it. Tops turns to the other surrounding tar creatures, squirting more chemicals. Over the screaming of the creatures, Brer Rabbit is gasping and shaking like it's her own skin being torn off.

“Mah babies!” Brer Rabbit wails, “What are yah _doin’_ to ‘em?”

“This is _Liquid Easy-Off_ , motherfucker.” Tops keeps squirting more of the chemical at the tar-creatures. The creatures burble and hiss, turning liquid and stinking like a rotten egg. “You’re done, bunny girl!”

Brer Rabbit scowls. “Not yet!” she growls, “Yah ain’t got enough of that junk to mess with me!”

She’s right but Tops knows it won’t take much of the chemical to melt these beasts. Some beasts are smart enough to dodge but Tops fends them off with his staff. He aims for the creature’s faces, mostly the eyes and mouths where they’re most vulnerable.

Still, it’s not enough.

The melted tar creatures are reforming, pulling themselves together for another attack. Another tar creature swerves around Tops, missing the chemical stream and his staff. It strikes at Tops’ left hand, cracking the water gun. The toy snaps in half and chemicals spill out, pouring down Tops’ hand and arm.

Prospect wasn’t kidding about the _Liquid Easy-Off._

Tops’ skin immediately blisters and reddens. He screams but clenches his teeth, fighting against the pain. He can’t focus on the agony though. Not with Brer Rabbit and his tar beasts still on the attack. Brer Rabbit is grinning again, having heard Tops’ scream. Tops fights against the pain and brings out his second squirt gun. The cheap plastic toy is leaking chemicals and it burns and blisters but he doesn’t care.

“That all you got?” Tops yells.

Brer Rabbit laughs and claps her hands. “ _Finally_!” she laughs, “Gloves off on _both_ sides!”

The tar beasts pull back. Tops thinks they might be retreating, but no. They pull and fuse together, merging consistently until they’re one giant body. Its twenty feet tall and its stench soils the air, forcing Tops’ eyes to water from the fumes alone. He keeps squirting at the tar beast but its thick body barely melts. Tops tosses the water gun at it, risking poor aim than more injury to himself.

The tar beast’s belly ripples, swallowing the gun. Its midriff sags, pouring black liquid onto the trash-scattered ground. More tar beasts crawl from the ground, rejoining the massive beast. Its yellow eyes glare down at him and its face breaks out into an infantile smile.

It's laughing. Laughing at him and his attempts to not die.

Tops hands are pained and blistered from the chemicals and the sting of the soiled air. Brer Rabbit is laughing, either at his futility or her triumph. Tops can’t blame her for that. He has nothing left now. Nothing but his brain and the staff.

The tar monster moves in, reaching toward Tops.

The staff pulsates under Tops’ fingers. He sees a splinter in the middle of it. Tar clings to the wood and a blue light shines underneath the tarry smear.

It still sings to him.

 

_I’ve been ‘buked an’ I’ve been scorned, children,_

_I’ve been ‘buked an’ I’ve been scorned._

 

“I ain’t gonna let you beat me.” Tops holds up the staff, almost choking on the tar stench. “You ain’t gonna beat me. Not now. Not ever.”

The creature’s hand charges in, formed into a fist. Its dark as midnight and stinks like a pool of gasoline. Tops holds tightly onto his staff and doesn’t fret or fight. He shuts his eyes and lets the fist fall squarely onto it.

Tarry fist meets wood and there’s a loud _bang._ The darkness swallows every light and the ground falls beneath him.

 

* * *

 

 

And then, suddenly, Tops is nowhere.

He is surrounded by oozing darkness and the only reason he knows that he’s not dead is because of the consistent sensation of pain in his fingers and arms from the _Liquid Easy-Off._ He tries to move his limbs but they may as well be stuck in molasses. His left arm hurts a lot more than he anticipated. Likely the impact from the tar creature broke it. His nose is filled with the sulfuric stench of the tar and rotting garbage. Perhaps the creature ate him and is transporting him right now.

Tops moves his face. He hisses as his cheek is sliced open by a sharp edge. He doesn’t dare open his eyes but he’s lying against _something_ more solid and reeking than tar.

Garbage. Part of the tar creature is smothering him. It's likely the punch sent him flying into one of the landfill’s many trash stacks. He twists and turns, but the tar on top of him is still holding onto his left arm and legs.

His right arm is holding onto something though.

Tops moves quickly. He doesn’t know how much oxygen he has left down here or if any of the rats or cockroaches that inhabit the landfill will come for him. He jerks and twists his right arm. It scratches and scrapes against every sharp object in the garbage pile. Tops hisses, nearly inhaling dirt and plastic shard.

He keeps pulling his hand toward him. His heart pounds with claustrophobic fear. He keeps pulling and finally the staff is freed from deep in the pile. Tops cautiously opens one eye. It's too dark for him to even see his hands in front of his face.

Light stings his eye. The staff has been cracked open and a blue light shines out. Between the wood fibers, Tops sees the crystalline heart of the carved root glow brighter.

“So that’s where you are.” He breathes.

The light grows bright and the magic pours its way into Tops, riding him with all its might.

 

* * *

 

 

Brer Rabbit crows like a triumphant rooster once her tar creature lands the hit on the other fae. The fool thought he could use his pathetic little stick to stop her. Shows him! Her tar beast knocked him through one garbage pile and into the other.

The tar creature swivels its big head toward her and Brer Rabbit sucks her teeth. “What’chu lookin’ at me fer? Go get him!” She twists her hand, gesturing to the tar creature. The tar creature burbles, clumsily moving toward the pile where it had knocked the other fae. “We still need to bring the remains to Daddy Jack at least.”

Daddy Jack had said for her to bring the crow fae whole but that was in an ideal situation. Maimed or half dead was just as good. With Daddy Jack’s conjuration, he could repair the situation; Brer Rabbit had no doubts about that.

While her tar beast went off to grab the crow fae, Brer Rabbit turned her head toward the rest of the landfill. The accursed land was empty as usual with no legionnaires in sight (thank goodness!). The night doctors were still shrieking, flying through the air and dashing between the garbage piles. Now that one of them had been loosed from Daddy Jack’s control, they had set upon the enemy. If they were smart, they hopefully would have killed the enemy by now.

Hopefully. Brer Rabbit’s conjuration isn’t on the same level as Daddy Jack’s. She can’t control the night doctors. For now, she’ll collect the crow fae and worry about it later. They’re a mess best left for the legionnaires or any stragglers left in the landfill wasteland.

Still, Daddy Jack would certainly be pleased with the results. Brer Rabbit can already envision a well-earned reward. After so much dutiful service, she’s bound to be promoted above all the others—well above those boot scrapers and ass-kissers that surround Daddy Jack in the hopes of praise.

There’s a roar from the ground. Brer Rabbit’s false furry ears twitch, picking up the earthly vibrations. The earth trembles and large cracks split, hissing out noxious vapors.

“What in ‘tarnation?” Brer Rabbit murmurs.

A black blob flies through the air. Brer Rabbit runs away as the tar beast lands, shaking the ground. Tar splatters and spreads through the landfill. Brer Rabbit moves close to the tar beast and looks ahead.

The ground continues cracking. A shadow moves out of a hole—the same hole that the crow fae had been tossed into.

No, it's not just a shadow. It’s a head. A massive head covered with hard beaten scales and a maw full of teeth. Its shrieks, shaking the air with its dreadful noise. Flame erupts from its back, covering its body with the golden glow of fire.

It pulls itself out of the ground, still screaming and snarling. The creature is big. Too big. Its muscles strain and pop as it lurches forward, moving toward the tar baby.

“Go!” Brer Rabbit screams against the noise, “Go! _Kill it!”_

It’s a futile cry and she knows it. Her heart thunders as the beast moves it closer. Its body is long and serpentine, full of fire and nothing like she has ever seen before. Its eyes are white and empty, reflecting the orange-red glow of the flames spouting from its back.

The tar creature does get up though. Brer Rabbit concentrates, despite the pain in her body from pushing herself. She summons more tar creatures, pulling them from the chunks of asphalt and gravel spread throughout the landfill. The tar creature reforms and charges, moving with only her assurances.

The fiery beast opens its maw. Fire pours from it, spilling onto the tar creature. The tar creature screams, breaking apart under the intense heat. Brer Rabbit screams, feeling as if her own skin is being peeled away by a hot knife.

The fire continues to spread, moving violently through the wasteland. It all happens too quickly for her to understand. Black chunks of dried and burnt tar fly through the air, splitting apart. The ground cracks open even more, there’s a loud _boom,_ and everything goes dark.

 

* * *

 

 

When Brer Rabbit gains consciousness, everything around her is burning. She’s lying on the ground with a chunk of dried tar near her skull and other chunks resting near her other limbs. Most of her clothes have been burned away and her exposed skin is charred and blistered like an overcooked ham. Even the fur stapled to her flesh is tacky with blood and tar, singed from the heat and fire. She breathes in and her chest aches; likely a broken rib as well.

Fire truck sirens sound in the distance. Its either humans or legionnaires, but neither will be good. Brer Rabbit fights through the pain covering her body and sits up. Her legs are too injured to support her weight, but she drags herself from where she’s fallen.

The ground is still cracked but the underground vapors are now feeding the fire. The garbage piles have been blown apart, knocked back from the hole the beast had crawled out of. Brer Rabbit breathes harshly and keeps dragging herself toward the hole. Her legs may not support her weight, but she uses it to push herself along the ground. She moves toward the hole, breathing through the pain raking through her body.

There is a five-foot pit in the ground. In the center of it is the crow fae. He’s curled up like an infant—surrounded by flames, hairless, small, body charred like he’s been roasted by the fires of Hell for hours on end, but somehow—by some work of God or the Devil—still breathing.

Brer Rabbit’s heart thumps. She wasted her magic trying to kill the beast when she should have focused on her other goal long ago. The sight pumps adrenaline through her body. She crawls closer to the edge of the hole, with her stomach sliding over the rough ground. When she reaches the edge of the hole, she digs into her pants. She finds a plastic handle and grips it, yanking it out.

The Good Lord has truly smiled on her. All she has to do is get close. She can still make Daddy Jack proud.

She can still earn her freedom. 

She crawls ever closer to the hole. All she needs to do is slide in, crawl towards the crow fae, and slit his throat.

A gun clicks. Before Brer Rabbit can turn toward the noise, it fires. A bullet strikes her hand, tearing through tendon and bone. She screams or tries to scream, but her voice is too hoarse. Brer Rabbit falls forward onto the ground. She grits her teeth and looks ahead.

The air shimmers and a boy appears. He has a head full of thick golden curls and skin pale as milk. Even a fool fae like Brer Rabbit knows from his curved eyes and broad nose that he’s a Seelie. Not just any Seelie but a highbred one born with a silver spoon in his mouth and gold diapers covering his ass. And now he’s pointing a gun at her.

“That’s far enough.” the boy says.

The boy makes a gesture and airplane gremlins fly in, landing on the area. The bastards are more muscles and metal than fae. Brer Rabbit snarls but the ugly motherfuckers ignore her venom. They pick up the shriveled and burnt body of the crow fae and fly off.

The fire trucks move in, entering the area. Voices are shouting commands and there are police sirens following them.

“Tell your boss I’m not playing games this game of ‘vague yet menacing overlord’.” the boy says, “I do all my business in the sunlight. If that’s too much for him, then he’s not worth my time.”

“Aristocrat _fuckah_!” Brer Rabbti snarls, “Daddy Jack’s coming for yah, _yah hear me?_ He’s gonna put his needles in yah head an’ fuck yah corpse right back tah life tah do his biddin’! He’s gonna staple yah Momma’s skin tah yah an’ make yah dance ‘bout like Pinocchio! Yah’ll see! He’s got more powah in his ‘lil fingah than yah got in yah whole body!”

“He’s certainly done a number on you.” The pretty little fuckface says, “So glad speaking with you, lovely rabbit. Have fun dealing with the legionnaires.”

Then the air shimmers and he disappears once more.

Brer Rabbit is left alone. The fire trucks have come, along with the human police. The humans won’t see her, but there are likely legionnaires mixed among them that will. They’ll gather her up, taking her to the jailhouse and finally toss her in a grindhouse.

She grins. She’s not afraid. It wouldn’t be her first stint in a grindhouse.

She shuts her eyes, surrendering to the darkness once more.


	7. Coaxing a Burnt Thing

Virgil has been around airplane gremlins long enough to learn their emotions. The fae race doesn't express their feelings in the same way a standard person would. Tears would rust their metal and their emotions are hampered by the metal in their faces. Yet, Virgil can still tell something is amiss. He teleports back to the cinema but when the gremlins arrive, the air is disturbed with uneven wingbeats. Beast Prospect is at the head of the flock and in his arms is Tops, or rather, what is left of Tops.

Tops is a sorry sight. He’s shriveled and burnt like a fire mummy and the smell of tar and blood clings to him. It had to be from the fight, as the mutilated rabbit fae stank of tar as well. The gremlins are concerned, questioning why Prospect is lugging around a corpse.

Of course, Virgil knows better--he always does—but he goes along with the show. He enters the cinema with Beast Prospect and the others. Even in the late night, people are still lazing around the lobby. Prostitutes are coming off their shift while others take over and the panhandlers are planning their routes for the day with others so they’re properly spread out. Everyone looks away from their current task and at the sight of Beast Prospect and what remains of Tops.

“I only saw part of it.” Beast Prospect’s face is still but his eyes never look away from Tops, “That conjurer woman had a crazy power I’d never seen before. He couldn’t have known—there’s no way a rat could fight that but he _did_ \--”

The other gremlins are moving through the lobby, returning to their respective loved ones. Virgil is already assured about how quickly word will spread. The gremlins will whisper about what happened—the boom that vibrated through the city, the tar monster, the fiery beast, and the lone fae that stood against everything despite not having a chance of winning. They’ll laugh about the absurdity at the bar or with their loved ones at the strange heroics coming from the one no one respected. 

Their thoughts will be consumed with how brave Tops is.

How _strange_ that Tops is.

That perhaps they underestimated him. That he’s capable of a lot more than they originally thought.

And then their thoughts will go toward Daddy Jack. Who is he? An enemy, obviously. The bastard attacked one of their own and with cowardly magic instead of weapons, like a real man. They’ll get him back—threefold! Blood for blood. From womb to tomb.

And so on and so forth.

It’s the rallying cry the Bridgewater Triangle needs. Tops had been a source of contention amongst the group—an outside, a rat who had been nibbling at the delicious cake of their business and then welcomed into the fold despite clumsily stumbling in the dark. Now through injury and fire, Tops is one of them. Beast Prospect suffered mild injury from the night doctors, but the airplane gremlins are hardy and clannish folk. They won’t reach out to the other races that make up Virgil’s business, and Tops is…

Well, Tops is _perfect._

Tops is a muddled bit of Americana—a walking melting pot. His skin isn’t dark enough for Seelie, not pale enough for Unseelie, his ears are pointed in that perfectly fae way that prevents the illusion of humanity, and his foul mouth makes him the enemy of any polished aristocrat. Its what Virgil has been searching for and it just falls into his lap.  That certain pinch of saffron or dash of cilantro that goes in Grandma’s stew to make it all so…

Perfect.

Virgil puts his plans aside and acts the part of the leader. He tells the gremlins and other curious on-lookers to give Prospect some space. They cower—of course—and Virgil moves to Prospect.

“Show me his room,” Virgil says.

Prospect nods. It’s a formality because Virgil already knows where Tops has been dwelling. They head outside, into the clear cold air of the late night and into the janitorial closet. Virgil looks around the janitorial closet, indulging in the nostalgia of this place while Prospect places Tops on the mass of old blankets and sleeping bags that he’s been resting on.

“Fucking idiot. Fucking stupid godsdamned idiot.” Beast Prospect mutters. The gremlin shakes his head, “He should have run. Even a stupid animal would have run.”

“Yes, yes, very stupid of him.” Virgil touches the gremlin’s shoulder. “But we work with what we’re given. That’s the kind of business we’re in.”

Prospect says nothing. His face is uneasy, staring ahead at Tops. “Is he going to make it?”

“Maybe, once I secure a healer.” Virgil says, “For now, you should get some rest.”

Prospect shakes his head. “I have a lot to do--”

“ _Prospect_.” The gremlin looks at him and Virgil gives him his most earnest face. “Part of being your boss is looking out for my men. You’ve been going all day. You need your rest. I can’t have one of my right-hand men being exhausted while making decisions.”

“What about the legionnaires, though?” Prospect asks, “There were human police and firefighters there. They’re definitely looking through the area.”

“Of course they are. They’re legionnaires, not incompetent.” Virgil chuckles, “The humans will likely think it was a small earthquake or perhaps a gas line eruption. The legionnaires are likely to collect Brer Rabbit for questioning. I’m sure they’ll give us some answers that way.” He looks around the janitorial closet. “While Tops is healing, I think we’ll make this area a bit hospital. This is a miserable place for a hero stay.” 

Prospect nods.  “I’ll see what I can do.” The gremlin pauses. “A _hero_ , sir?”

Virgil nods. “This ‘Daddy Jack’ is trying to encroach on our business and trying to kill my men. Whoever he is, we need to send a clear message that this won’t be tolerated on any level. Tops fought as hard as he could for the sake of the Bridgewater Triangle and we shouldn’t forget that.”

Of course, Virgil has no idea if Tops had the Bridgewater Triangle _at all_ in mind while he was fighting. Likely, he was doing it so he wouldn’t die. Though Tops isn’t conscious to argue with him about intent; Virgil is the one speaking for him now.

Prospect doesn’t protest though. He nods and leaves the janitorial closet, hurrying off. Virgil doubts he’ll rest though. He’s more likely to speak with the other gremlins about Virgil’s orders and then rest when everything else is done.

Whatever. Its no concern to Virgil. He looks to Tops—burnt and barely breathing.

Good. A burnt thing is better. Burned things can be rejuvenated and forced into growing hardier and faster than ever before. All it takes is some determination and elbow grease and Tops will be better than ever.

Virgil takes Top’s shriveled hand. Even in his shrunken state, Tops is still too heavy for Virgil to carry so this will have to do. Virgil concentrates and the air shudders and the walls of the janitorial closet warp around him. Then he isn’t in the janitorial closet but in Alichino’s playroom.

Alichino sits in a beanbag, pressing buttons on a plastic controller and their eyes focused on a screen.

“What is it, big brother?” Alichino asks, not looking away from the screen.

“Focus please, darling Alichino.” Virgil requests.

Alichino presses a button and looks away from the screen. They gasp, almost falling out the chair. “Gods above and below, Virgil!” They get up, walking over to Virgil and looking at Tops current state as it rests on the playroom floor. “What’d you do? Have a bad barbeque get out of control again?”

“Ah, always with the old jokes, dear sibling.” Virgil chuckles, “I need a touch of hoodoo hands right now.”

Alichino nods. The air shudders and the three of them are in one of many cushioned rooms riddled through the extension of the playroom. Virgil personally hates being in the little rooms. It's too soft for him, as if he could sink into the floor and never come back up.

“I hope this isn’t one of your ‘feeding’ rooms,” Virgil says.

 “No.” Alichino pauses, “Well, yeah, but I can’t ‘eat’ _him_.” They bend down to look closely at Tops, running fingers along Tops’ burnt body.

“Too tough?”

“Too _old_.” Alichino gasps and then looks at Virgil with wide, dark eyes. “H-he’s still _alive!_ ”

Virgil raises an eyebrow. “You expected different?”

“He’s a blasted _mummy_ , big brother!” Alichino nibbles at their thumbnail. “Oh, big brother, I thought you wanted me to lay hands and raise him best as I could, though I doubt it would ‘take’ much, but he…” The eyes go back to Tops and then to Virgil again. “Big brother, where did you find this person?”

“In a garbage dump covered in his own piss and bile.”

“Really?” Alichino shakes their head, their little jester bells jingling. “Oh, big brother. You live such a strange life to find this person. They’ll live but it’ll take time. They’ll grow and shed this awful skin and maybe they’ll be good as new. Maybe.” Their eyes narrow. “I’m just worried that is, well, another one.”

Virgil swallows. Damn his sibling for being so perceptive. Sometimes he wishes Alichino’s head was nothing but animal stuffing and videogames.

“It won’t be another failure.” Virgil insists, “The failure couldn’t even make it _this_ far.”

Alichino nods, but their eyes are still on Tops.

“I just worry, big brother. I can’t _help_ but worry.” Alichino says, “The years are turning and next year is a tithe-year. Your ideas are rocks in the pond and sometimes those ripples you make shake things awake like--”

 _“I know.”_ Virgil’s teeth are clenched, “I was too impatient last time. I know better now. This time, we’ll be ready.”

Alichino nods. “Yes, big brother.”

“I want an update every day on his condition, even if its unchanged.” Virgil says, “We’re going to use this downtime as an opportunity to learn all we can.”

Everything is going to be perfect. Virgil can feel it in his bones. As he teleports back to the cinema, he returns to his business and prepares himself to dive deep into his research.

One way or another, he _will_ learn the identity of Daddy Jack and—most importantly—what his end game is.


	8. Epilogue

Brer Rabbit shuts her eyes but she doesn’t die. The rogue night doctors don’t tear her apart. Her heart doesn’t give out from the stress and trauma of battle. Her limbs are still broken and her hand is useless and bleeding, and yet she still breathes.

She is in a small tunnel, lined with garbage. The smell is overwhelming and black ooze drips from the ceiling. Mingled with dirt and garbage are familiar objects that Brer Rabbit’s good eye recognizes: tattered legionnaire clothes, dismantled guns, ripped teddy bears, and deflated tires. The only source of light is a light bulb dangling from the tunnel ceiling, steadily blinking a low yellow light.

“Where the fuck am I?” Brer Rabbit grunts. Her voice is hoarse and aching.

“Ya kiss ya mother with that mouth?” snickers a voice. It's rumbling, as if its spent the last century swallowing glass and gravel.

“Daddy Jack?” she whispers.

“Guess again.”

A creature squats at the far, dark end of the tunnel. It has three ink-black eyes and the skin of a drowned man and black ooze rubbed over his body. It’s all height, muscle, and terror of the unknown. Brer Rabbit would likely be shaking with fear if she hadn’t already seen hell and all the horrors that it holds.

“Who are you?” Brer Rabbit asks.

“Just some spare junk.” The creature croaks.

“I already got my allegiances. You’re a bit too late to convert me.”

“Good. One problem solved.”

Plastic tendrils slither out of the tunnel walls. Brer Rabbit doesn’t get a chance to scream before they throttle her. She struggles briefly before a loud _snap_ leaves her limp. It's for the best the end comes quickly for her, because what follows is sanguinary and ugly. The creature makes quick work of her body, with his sharp teeth moving through her skin and flesh like a hot knife through butter.

What is left of Brer Rabbit is unrecognizable. There are chunks of bone colored with quicksilver blood and silvered flesh, along with staples and rabbit fur that were chewed and then spat out. Not the creature could stomach such abominations of the flesh.

Bloodied and satisfied, the creature stands over the remains of the body. Magic courses through it, dilating their hideous body’s veins with stolen life force.

“Huh.” mutters the creature, “So _that’s_ what it feels like to control asphalt.”

It cackles in the darkness.

“Neat.”


	9. Folkloric Footnotes

**[1] fae vehicles/mutant cars:** Mutant vehicles are a feature of the American festival, Burning Man. The distinction between art cars and mutant vehicles is rather blurry but the point is style over efficiency. American fae have long since bucked the trend of keeping fantastical horses and now prefer to have art commissioned vehicles. Most middle and lower income fae have more moderate designs to their vehicles since the crazier ones are waaay out of their price range.

 **[2] little greys:** While most fairies didn’t survive the trans-Atlantic trip to the New World, Americans have their own native mythology in the form of UFOlogy. Greys or grey aliens are the most common figures in UFO lore, having large heads, black eyes, and small, thin bodies. For fae, greys are just members of the Unseelie servant caste. 

 **[3] little greens:** Another from UFO lore, little green men have older origins than greys in early 20th century science fiction novels. They are far less common nowadays though. For fae, greens are just members of the Seelie servant caste.

 **[4] tall whites:** Also called ‘Pleiades’, tall white aliens are like the Ufology equivalent of elves, being mysterious, tall, willowy, and white. The earliest sighting of them dates to the 1960s. For fae, tall whites are members of the Unseelie ruling caste.

 **[5] tall blacks:** Also called Anunnaki, these aliens vary in appearance and behavior and are basically responsible for anything, from crop circles to humanity to fluoride in your drinking water. For fae, tall blacks are members of the Seelie ruling caste.

 **[6] _Guys and Dolls:_ ** An American musical that I have seen too many times because I was a theater nerd. Modern human musicals are very fashionable with American fae, although things are always localized to be more accessible.  

 **[7] insectoid:** Another bit of Ufology, insect-based alien sightings are actually less common than you think. Insectoids are common to science fiction and fantasy, originated in the silent film era and in pulp fiction novels. For fae, insectoids include any bug-related race and make up most of the population of the Unseelie middle-class.

 **[8] die-cast cars:** Die-cast toys are toys typically made typically of cheap metal (lead, zinc, aluminum, copper)and usually molded n the shape of vehicles. They’ve been super popular in America since the 1960s-1970s since brought over to toy manufacturer Mattel. Die-cast car collecting is serious business with a variety of difference qualities, scales, and so forth. Despite being so long lived, fae tend to only have one or two hobbies that they maintain lifelong obsessions with. Some fae will maintain two or three identities just so they can go to human-run hobby shops and conventions without their lifespans being questioned.  

 **[9] goatman:** The goatman is actually a _very_ common cryptid in the Americas, with sightings located in Appalachian Mountains, the South, and the Midwest. For fae, the goatmen were one of the first European immigrants to arrive during the Colonial era. They’re considered less sexually aggressive and taller than their satyr cousins. There’s also many goatman subcultures, making them similar in appearance but very different.

 **[10] Cadillac:** Despite the American automobile industry hiccupping during the 2000s, this luxury car brand is still associated with high status and quality. Cars are a big deal for American fae and those who live in the colonies just _love_ to joyride in some poor mayfly’s vehicle.  

 **[11] Goodwill drop-off box/donate box:** Not sure how common this is in other countries, but in America, Goodwill Industries are a nonprofit that sells used items. They also have donation boxes located in neighborhoods, but they’ve been steadily retiring them due to people just using them as an excuse to dump unwanted furniture and broken TVs (as the price of paying the state to haul such items away has escalated in recent years). Thus why people (at least in New England) have started them calling ‘drop off boxes’ rather than ‘donation boxes’.

 **[12] madstones:** In American Appalachian folklore, a madstone is a rock that could prevent or cure diseases. The exact _kind_ of stone is disputed with some accounts saying it’s a bezoar and others saying its actually a vegetable. For fae, madstones represent currency like how modern Americans use dollars. The madstone itself is not valuable, but represents value. Currency madstones are specially made and enchanted to prevent counterfeiting and to track circulation (very much like what the US treasury does with its money).

 **[13] _The Complete Edition of the 6 th and 7th Books of Moses, or Moses’ Magical Spirit-Art: _**Yet another case of reality being stranger than fiction. This 18th century grimoire was (supposedly) written by Moses. It includes a variety of spells, from summoning angels to protective seals. The book was popular in America, influencing rural folk magic and African-American spiritualism, which would later become hoodoo. More about that below.  

 **[14] conjure/hoodoo:** The history of hoodoo and African-America spiritualism is a fractured and long one, so I’ll simplify it as much as possible. Long story short: the transatlantic slave trade created hoodoo when African slaves started blending African religion, European occultism, and Christian spiritualism. Most of hoodoo’s practices work in the physical realm, using body fluids, powders, potions, and personal possessions to work its magic (i.e. sympathetic magic). Hoodoo goes by many names but is commonly called ‘conjure’ as well. For fae, any person practicing American magic on American soil is doing hoodoo by default. 

 **[15] voodoo and hoodoo:** This is the source of a lot of confusion, but long story short: voodoo and hoodoo have similar origins but are different entities. Voodoo (derivative of the Vodun religion) still leans very heavily into African traditions and many of its gods and spirits are syncretized with Roman Catholic saints. Hoodoo lacks saints and spirits, mentioning only Moses as a fellow conjurer and using the Bible as a talisman and even _that_ practice is disputed. 

 **[16] _John, Solomon, and Moses:_ ** The names of some folkloric conjurers: John the Conqueror (essentially African King Arthur), Moses (from the Bible), and Solomon (also from the Bible). For fae, conjure-kings are the strongest magic-users of that era and live in isolation under assumed names and identities.

 **[17] _haints:_** A common Appalachian and Midwestern term for ghost. For the fae, a ‘haint’ is any member of the undead be they non-corporeal like a poltergeist or rotting like a zombie. Of course, only unsophisticated and poor lowlies call the undead ‘haints’.

 **[18] tommyknockers:** Who wants more Appalachian lore? Tommyknockers originate in the early 19th century and are said to be underground elves that live in the mines and constantly make noise. There’s dispute over whether they’re ghosts or if they’re harmful or good. Among the fae, tommyknockers are members of the goblin race that live specifically underground because they can’t tolerate sunlight. While mischievous, they mean no direct harm to humans.

 **[19] Daddy Jack:** There are a _lot_ of ‘Jacks’ in folklore but most African-American folklore refers to a singular ‘Daddy Jack’. Although popularized by _The Complete Tales of Uncle Remus,_ its more likely that Daddy Jack existed in oral traditions before that. In the source material, Daddy Jack was an old man born in Africa and made a slave, yet retained most of the mystic knowledge he had learned back home.

 **[20] Brer Rabbit:** Another character popularized by _Uncle Remus_ , Brer Rabbit or Brother Rabbit is a folkloric trickster who always works to outwit those that try to capture or kill him.

 **[21]** **_Yah best hope yah mama tol’ yah dumbass dat ev’ry closed eye ain’ sleep an’ ev’ry goodbye ain’ gone, mothafucka!:_** “Watch your back”, essentially.

 **[22] Brer Rabbit and tar:** One of the most well known stories of Brer Rabbit involving him getting stuck in a “baby” made of tar and escaping through a brier patch. Originally the term ‘tar baby’ referred to any “sticky situation” but it now has racist connotations for Black people. It’s a slur you don’t hear often but it still packs a punch. Even I have difficulty writing about it...

 **[23] “Motherless Child”:** The name of a traditional Negro spiritual. Like most Negro spirituals, it comes out of slavery and would influence a lot of later American genres like rock, jazz, and blues.

 **[24] Foghorn Leghorn:** If you’ve watched any Looney Toons or Merrie Melodies, you should know who Foghorn Leghorn is. What few people know is that Leghorn is a reference to a 1940s radio character, Senator Beauregard Claghorn. As radio shows have gone the way of the dinos in American pop culture, most just assume Foghorn came first. Tops isn’t familiar with Brer Rabbit’s Gullah dialect so he assumes she’s just “Southern”.

 **[25] Peter Rabbit:** A character from Beatrix Potter’s children stories. Like Brer Rabbit, he’s a jackass who gets into trouble although I think he’s slightly less of a dick than Squirrel Nutkin. I actually learned about Peter Rabbit through educational videogames first and the books second. Tops is likely more familiar with the original picture books, which are actually _super old_ being published in 1902.

 **[26] mosquito woman/averasboro gallinipper/ro-tay-yo:** While giant insects are common to American folklore but few of them have _specific_ names. The galinipper is an exception to the rules, first sighted from Averasboro, North Carolina. This giant mosquito has Native American origins although Native Americans argue that it’s a giant yellow-jacket, not a mosquito. Debate in the comment section which is worse to encounter.

 **[27] Chi-Chi’s:** Chi-Chi’s is a restaurant franchise that is somehow still in fucking business despite being terrible. The sauce they make is also terrible. I have eaten there exactly once twenty years ago and I have no desire to ever eat there again.

 **[28] Howard Johnson:** Howard Johnson’s is a chain of restaurants and hotels that offer dinner food and a place to sleep. According to my parents, Howard Johnson actually used to be a pretty popular franchise back in the 1970s. I don’t believe them. In 2017, there’s only one Howard Johnson’s remaining in Lake George, NY, which I saw but never went into because it looked haunted.

 **[29] jiangshi:** Also called ‘hopping vampires’, these stiff corpses from Chinese folklore move around by hopping about and need to absorb _qi_ (life energy) to continue surviving. There’s a lot of variants on jiangshi’s abilities and weaknesses. Fae always have a problem with the undead and work very hard to exterminate them.

 **[30] hungry ghosts:** Another aspect from Chinese folklore, hungry ghosts are the spirits of people who either die violently or ancestors who are not venerated. The origins on them vary but it should be stressed that regular people do not become hungry ghosts. Like jiangshi, fae always work hard to exterminate any ‘outbreaks’ of the undead.

 **[31] scorched men:** Hey, you want to learn something terrifying? Read about Centralia, Pennsylvania. Once you’re done reading that, I’d like to let you know that a lot of fae were still underground when the coal fires started and they still live down there. They’re called the scorched men. It goes without saying that even fae are scared of Centralia, Pennsylvania.

 **[32] lunatic mummies:** According to urban legend, a doctor at the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum of West Virginia used to mummified patients in the hope of “unlocking the secrets of the pharaohs”. These ‘lunatic mummies’ were the subject of tours and other roadside oddities. For fae, these mummies are less roadside weirdness and more of a problem, especially in the mountains where some of them reside.

 **[33] _Liquid Easy-Off:_** Not a real brand but similar to it. Most modern theaters actually hire a third party to do the cleaning if they can afford it and the actual chemicals used aren’t often said. The theater Virgil uses probably shut down in a hurry.

 **[34] cardiff giant:** One of the many famous archaeological hoaxes featured at P.T. Barnum’s circle, the cardiff giants were said to be the remains of the giants mentioned before the Flood in the Bible.

 **[35] East Coast:** The East Coast of the United States, specifically.

 **[36] Hopskinville goblin:** In 1955, a family in Hopskinville, Kentucky allegedly encountered 12 to 15 of small goblin-like aliens at their house. The creatures were said to have harassed them repeatedly. For fae, a Hopskinville goblin is no different from the other members of the servant caste.  

 **[37] “I’ve been ‘buked an’ I’ve been scorned, children”:** “I’ve Been ’Buked and I’ve Been Scorned” is another Negro spiritual. Like most spirituals, it was popularized during the 1960s Civil Rights movement. 

 **[38] _boujee_ : **The term ‘boujee’ was popularized by rap but it was in use long before that in Black communities. It basically refers to an uppity person.

 **[39] Gullah language:** A bit more on Brer Rabbit’s manner of speaking. Its not just ‘Southernism’; she’s speaking Gullah! Also called Sea Island Creole English, Geechee, or just “Creole”, it’s a language commonly spoken by Blacks living in the South or the Caribbean. If you read a lot of Black folklore, you’ll often encounter stories written in this dialect or close to it. There are _a lot_ of varieties on Gullah, differing from family to family even, so even the kind of storytelling Gullah may be different from the Gullah spoken in schools, the Gullah spoken to friends…etc.

 **[40] The Good Lord:** Despite all the problems it might raise on a mythological level, some fae _do_ subscribe to the Christian faith. It makes for interesting conversation, to say the least.

 **[41] grindhouse:** Although the term goes back to the 1920s, a ‘grindhouse’ was popularized in the 1960s and 70s when certain films would specifically show exploitation cinema. For fae, a grindhouse is a prison where you work off your time by participating in projects for ‘research’ or give back to the community using hard labor. Your time due is not counted in the time actually spent in prison but _the time spent working._ Regular (more human-like) prisons exist but grindhouses are for special criminals (typically doing something really bad or repeat-offenders).

 **[42] “Americana”:** This term refers to a lot of different ideals, objects, and so forth but simply its just whatever feels very “American”. This can mean from the 1950s _Leave it to Beaver_ style of segregated suburbia, apple pie, or just a double-bacon cheeseburger pizza.

 **[43] legionnaires:** Cops. Legionnaires are fae cops with some differences between them and the regular human police. Legionnaires answer to the courts and uphold court laws without being officially part of it. Legionnaires are considered to be both Seelie and Unseelie. Since there’s no _real_ magical difference between the courts (just a racial one), this is just a political thing. Legionnaires also work more like mercenaries, getting in bounties for certain criminals that become bonuses. ‘Scouts’ are also more like interns, not having a real rank or steady pay being ‘in-training’. Legionnaires really have a more military set-up with their own barracks, property, code, and so forth.

 **[44] _to lay hands_ : **Also called ‘laying on of hands’, this is a term for Christian faith healing in American traditions although it can also refer to Native American culture as well. For fae, ‘laying hands’ means to work specifically healing magic on someone.

 **[45] tithe-year:** Originating from the English ballad of ‘Tam Lin’, a tithe (or teind) is a tribute the fairies would give to the devil (or ‘Hell’) every seven years. There’s debate about whether this is actually true or if Tam Lin is making shit up to get out of knocking someone up (He’s kind of a dick). As for the American fae, the Seelie and Unseelie Court _do_ pay a unanimous tribute every seven years to “Hell”.

 **[46] Seelie caste system:** American fae used to have a stricter caste system but time has loosened that definition. Now there is really more of an economic restriction. At the top are the ruling nobility (kings, queens, councilors) made of ‘tall blacks’, below them are the highbred nobility who are related to the ruling nobility via marriage or blood, in the middle are the working class made most of reptilians, and at the very bottom are the little greens. Of course, there are a lot of differences and exceptions. For more information check out <http://bad-imagination.tumblr.com/tagged/elvish+americana>.

 **[47] Unseelie caste system:** American fae used to have a stricter caste system but time has loosened that definition. Now there is really more of an economic restriction. At the top are the ruling nobility (kings, queens, councilors) made of ‘tall whites’, below them are the highbred nobility who are related to the ruling nobility via marriage or blood, in the middle are the working class made most of insectoids, and at the very bottom are the little greys. Of course, there are a lot of differences and exceptions. For more information check out <http://bad-imagination.tumblr.com/tagged/elvish+americana>.

 **[48] So what about lowlies?:** Lowlies and others are not considered part of the caste system, the court system, or any system at all. Lowlies are forcibly not apart of any governmental system because the very idea offends them on a cultural level. Others are not a part of the system either due to economic restrictions or just snobbery.

 **[49] Who is a mage and who isn’t?:** If you work for a Court or _are a part of the Court system_ and do magic, you’re a mage. If you’re _not a part of a Court_ and do magic, you’re a conjurer. Easy as that.

 **[50] What language is that?:** What’s the deal with how the lowlies Tops was raised with talk? As we’ve seen in _What the Snake Saw,_ they don’t speak that way! Actually, they do. Tops was raised in a truly lowly community and they all speak the lowlie cant, which is a mix of bastardized American English, Seelie and Unseelie languages, and loanwords from other languages. To human ears, it sounds like Yankee dialect or Appalachian English. Yankee dialect is rarely portrayed in fiction since it’s a very verbal-confounding dialect but I feel the _closest_ portrayal of it in a literal sense would be in Lovecraft’s _The Picture in the House._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's it for this story arc. Questions? Comments? Theory speculation? Leave a comment, bookmark the series, or just head on over to bad-imagination.tumblr.com to chat with me. I'm always willing to talk shop with fans or just anyone really. c:


End file.
